New Training: Administer Group Policy

In this 6-video skill, CBT Nuggets trainer Garth Schulte covers the purpose of Group Policy and shows you how to configure, deploy, and manage it in a Windows Server environment. Learn how to create a Group Policy Object (GPO), how to troubleshoot a GPO, and how to assign a GPO to an Organizational Unit (OU). Watch this new Microsoft Windows Server training.

Watch the full course: Microsoft Server 2019 Essentials

This training includes:

• 6 videos

• 47 minutes of training

You’ll learn these topics in this skill:

• Introduction to Administer Group Policy

• Group Policy Overview

• Configuring Group Policy Objects

• Deploying and Troubleshooting Group Policy Objects

• Managing Group Policy Objects

• Group Policy Best Practices

Why Group Policy is the Ultimate Security Tool

Group Policy can be used for many things, but Microsoft primarily designed it for network administrators to use as a security tool. Rather than having to individually configure each user profile and computer, net admins can define a series of security settings for each and then apply them as needed.

Policies, which are a collection of individual Group Policy settings, are known as Group Policy Objects, or GPOs. GPOs are managed from the Group Policy Management Console, a central interface that further simplifies network admin responsibilities. In addition to this graphical user interface, Group Policy can be managed from the command line interface.

GPOs are applied in a hierarchical fashion, beginning with the objects themselves and then ascending to the site, domain, and organizational levels, respectively. Some of the simpler applications of Group Policy include enforcing minimum password lengths, forcefully installing security patches, and hiding Windows Control Panel from users to prevent them from adjusting any settings on their PCs.