Getting Control Of Customer Group Policy Environments

By Darren Mar-Elia – Microsoft Group Policy MVP and founder of GPOGUY.COM

This might sound like a common scenario. You come upon a new customer's site, ready to on-board them, and you find Windows desktops and servers with a variety of security and lockdown settings – some perhaps causing issues for users or preventing certain operations from functioning correctly. In these scenarios, Group Policy might be the culprit. Group Policy is the built-in configuration management tool for Windows desktops and servers, and is used for everything from securing Windows servers to configuring Internet Explorer or removing elements of the user experience on Windows desktop.

In this paper, we'll talk about the steps you should go through to ensure that you are able to:

1. Know what the customer has in their environment
2. Create a new standard for Windows desktop management that makes sense
3. Maintain that standard going forward

The question is, why is it important to ensure Group Policy is managed in a standard, controlled way? For you, as a Managed Service Provider (MSP), the goal is ensuring that your customer's systems are responsive, secure and trouble-free. Group Policy is a key technology for managing Windows security and desktop lockdown and, when managed well, can provide a seamless end user experience and reduce the costs for you of managing Windows systems.

In this paper, we'll walk through these key steps in Group Policy Management and help guide you through the process of taking control of Windows Group Policy and reducing your costs of managing Windows desktops.