Group Policy Blog by Darren Mar-Elia (The “GPOGUY”)
“Secure by Default” and Hardening Your Windows Configurations
I had a good email conversation last week with someone on the PowerShell team at Microsoft, in the wake of the release of our Desired State Configuration CSE. The gist of his question was around how users could protect the configuration information held within the DSC...
Desired State Configuration and Group Policy Come Together!
If any of you were at Microsoft's Ignite conference last week, and caught the session I participated in around Group Policy, you might have heard me talk about an exciting new piece of technology related to PowerShell Desired State Configuration that we were releasing...
Group Policy Session at Microsoft Ignite Conference
Hi folks I wanted to drop a quick note to remind those of you at Microsoft Ignite conference here in Chicago, that I'll be presented a Group Policy session in about 45 minutes (9am local time) with fellow MVP Jeremy Moskowitz, in room S100 (that's a ginormous room!)...
SDM Software and the “GPOGUY” at Microsoft Ignite
Hi Folks- Just a quick heads up--there's a lot going on in the next two weeks in Microsoft-land. This week is the developer-oriented Microsoft Build conference in San Francisco, where a lot of new announcements are expected. Following close on the heels of that, is...
Group Policy And PowerShell–The “Unholy Alliance”
Last night I had the opportunity to present at the Pacific IT Pros user group meeting in San Francisco. As this blog title indicates, the topic was using PowerShell to manage Group Policy. This is a talk I've given before, but I updated it to reflect newer...
Understanding the Role of ADMX (and ADM) Files in Group Policy
Recently I've been answering a few questions about the role of ADMX files (Administrative Templates) in Group Policy. For those who are new to Group Policy or haven't spent a lot of time with it, I have seen some misunderstanding around what these template files...
Group Policy Training Course Now Available!
I've spread the news a bit on social media, but I wanted to officially blog about the fact that my "Group Policy Fundamentals" video training course is now available for Pluralsight subscribers. This course was definitely a labor of love for me--over 11 hours of Group...
Understanding the JASBUG Vulnerability and Group Policy
Earlier this week, Microsoft released a couple of patches that addressed vulnerabilities in our good friend Group Policy. First, I will say that it's relatively rare to see such vulnerabilities directly effect Group Policy function, like this one does. That's a good...
How Much Group Policy Lockdown is Too Much Lockdown?
I'm sure everyone has heard the phrase, "when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail". Sometimes Group Policy can be this way. I've been doing Group Policy now, for, well...a long time. Before that, I was an early aficionado of System Policy in NT 4.0 and the...
Auditing Group Policy Security Settings with Group Policy Compliance Manager
You'll recall a couple of blog posts ago, I announced that we had shipped our Group Policy Compliance Manager (GPCM) product, which allows you to report on what Group Policy is doing on all your end nodes that process policy. One of the key use cases for...