Chapter 8. Creating Group Policies
Group Policy is a method of managing the configuration and security of the computers in your environment. The policies can be applied to user or computer settings and enable centralized efficient management of the environment.
This chapter starts by explaining the concepts you need to be effective with Group Policy. In this chapter you’ll discover how to create new policies and manage their settings. The application of Group Policy is left until chapter 9.
Group Policy has nothing to do with groups. A Group Policy Object (GPO) defines a number of settings—for example, the screensaver to be used, the control panel options that are available to a user, and the features available on the Start menu or in Internet Explorer. These settings can then be applied to sets of users or computers by linking them to OUs or the domain.
Group Policy is immensely powerful. A GPO contains thousands of settings to manage your environment. You can use GPOs to manage many things, including
- Rights to log on to particular machines
- User settings, such as logon scripts, printers, and mapped drives, and organizational standards such as wallpaper, event log configuration, and rights to access the file system
- Control of Windows components like Windows Update, and applications like Microsoft Office
- Software availability, settings, and distribution