1. DEPLOYING SECURITY CONFIGURATION
CHAPTER 10
DEPLOYING SECURITY CONFIGURATION

2. Creating a testing environment
Initial testing phase of deploying a configuration is to implement security parameter settings in a lab environment.
Lab network should closely resemble the actual environment in which you will deploy your configurations. Lab network should also be isolated.
Five basic steps involved:
Creating a test plan
Creating test cases
Building a lab
Conducting the tests
Evaluating the results

3. Creating a test plan
Test plan specifies what you want to accomplish & how the testing process will proceed.
Most typical testing objectives are as follows;
Hardware compatibility testing
Application & OS compatibility testing
Hardware & software production evaluation
Performance baseline determination
Security testing
Documentation of installation & configuration procedures
Documentation of administrative procedures.

4. Creating test cases
To test specific elements of your network installations, you create test cases
A test case is a procedure that fully tests a particular feature or setting by mocking the actual working environment with sample of actual data.
Each test case should include these information
The purpose of the test case
The hardware & software required to perform test
Installation & configuration procedures required before testing can proceed
The procedure for performing the test.

5. Building a lab Nature of testing lab depends on variety of factors;
Size & nature of the organization
Amount of testing to be done
Complexity of the network
Duration of the testing process.
You may use lab for any of the following;
Developing the overall design of the network
Evaluating software & hardware products
Planning performance & capacity
Determining bandwidth requirements
Establishing administrative policies
Training users & support staff

6. Conducting the tests
Ease or complexity of the actual testing process depends on the amount of details of the test plan.
The first step of conducting tests is to configure the computers & other components required for the test according to the specifications in your test case.
Once you have created the environment you need, you may proceed with the testing.

7. Evaluating the results
Once the testing process is finished, you should have a complete record of everything that occurred to be used in evaluation.
Proper documentation is very much essential.
As result of your testing, you may decide the security configuration parameters are acceptable as is, or need modification in which you may need to perform the testing process again.

8. Understanding security templates
Collection of configuration settings stored as text file with ‘.inf’ extension
Consists of policies & settings that you can use to control a computer’s security configuration using local/group policies.
Templates can be used to configure any of these policies & parameters;
Account policies
Local policies
Event log policies
Restricted group
System services
Registry permission
File system permission

9. Understanding security templates
Advantages to storing tour security configuration parameters in security templates;
Since its in the form of text file, you may edit manually, cut, copy or paste as needed.
Templates make it easy to store security configurations of various types so that you can easily apply different levels of security to computers performing different roles.