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If you’re an IT pro working with Active Directory, you can use Group Policy to configure the Windows environments of your users’ computers and your enterprise servers using Group Policy Objects (GPO). However, the struggle to reach an intuitive and secure environment is real. In this article, I will explain how to create a GPO,…

Russell Smith shows us how to create and link a Group Policy Object in Active Directory in this step-by-step how-to article.

Navigating Group Policy issues can be challenging in an Active Directory environment, but the gpresult command is a powerful tool for diagnosing and resolving these problems. This article helps you to effectively use gpresult to troubleshoot Group Policy information, ensuring your system configurations are applied correctly and efficiently. Using GPResult for Basic Troubleshooting Let me…

Group Policy WMI Filtering is a powerful feature that allows administrators to apply Group Policy Objects (GPOs) and Group Policy preferences based on specific attributes of target computers, servers, and users. By leveraging Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) queries, IT professionals can create highly targeted and dynamic GPOs that respond to the unique needs of their…

Active Directory groups are essential tools for managing and organizing users, computers, and other resources within a Windows domain. This article will provide an in-depth exploration of Active Directory (AD) groups, including their types, purposes, and best management practices. Whether you’re a seasoned IT professional or just beginning your journey with Active Directory, this guide…

This guide aims to help you understand how to navigate and use the Windows Local Group Policy Editor (LGPE) to enhance your Windows desktop environment’s security, performance, and usability. What is the Local Group Policy Editor? The Windows Local Group Policy Editor is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in that allows you to manage and…

A simple (non-complex) Active Directory password (AD) is vulnerable to hacking and exploitation. Requiring complex passwords in your Active Directory password policy increases the effectiveness of passwords exponentially – each additional special character you require in your users’ passwords makes them ultimately impervious to brute-force attacks. Going back to the 2000s, Excel’s simple workbook-protected passwords…

Microsoft has rolled out a new update that enables administrators to use PowerShell scripts with Windows Autopatch to resolve policy conflicts more efficiently. Windows Autopatch is a cloud-based service that helps organizations automate the update process for Windows, Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise, Microsoft Edge, and Microsoft Teams. What causes policy conflicts? Microsoft explains that…

PowerShell is considered secure by default due to various design principles and features that Microsoft incorporated into its architecture. These measures aim to ensure that PowerShell provides a robust, yet safe, scripting environment for system administration tasks. One feature of PowerShell that contributes to this are known as execution policies, which can be set using…

Databases are the primary containers for your SQL Server relational database objects. Some of the main relational database objects that are contained in SQL Server databases include: tables, schema, indexes, views, logins, security and roles. You can create a SQL database plus there are a number of built-in SQL system databases including the master, model, msdb and tempdb databases. Technically, SQL Server supports a…

Group Policy is an infrastructure feature in Active Directory that allows IT pros to manage their users’ Windows environments and servers. In this article, I will explain in detail what is Group Policy, what is a Group Policy Object (GPO), and how to adjust the policy settings to meet your security needs and compliance requirements….

When working in a Microsoft 365 environment, IT pros can use Conditional Access policies to control access to their tenant. In this article, we’ll detail how to create Conditional Access policies using PowerShell instead of the graphical user interface, and why using PowerShell to do that can help you save some time Conditional Access policies…