Today marks the official conclusion of Spring 1 and the mid-point for the project. We’ve accomplished a number of things during the first half of the project:
- Set up virtual machines on a VMWare server
- Due to resource limitations, we couldn’t obtain a 3rd client machine
- Create and configure Active Directory
- Create and configure file shares
- Set up users and groups
- Set up high-level GPOs and most of our low-level GPOs
Early on in Sprint 1 I created a custom MMC console which included AD Users & Computers, AD Sites & Services, and Group Policy Management. This helped increase our efficiency in completing tasks that involved using separate modules.
With all of our sprint 1 tasks complete, we’re free to begin focusing on the second half of the project. The remainder of the project will include the following:
- Server hardening
- Disabling all unnecessary services
- Password complexity requirements
- Limiting remote access to the server
- And others
- Fine tuning GPOs
- Some final adjustments and tweaks to the GPOs to ensure all teams have what they need without any extra access.
- Research implementation of additional functionality
- SCCM software deployments
- WDS / Image deployment
- Etc.
Once we have finished up on our domain, we will engage in a thorough test of the configuration to ensure it meets the standards we set.
It should be noted that while progress may seem slow considering the size of our fictional organization, the reason for this was due in large part to our limited schedules and to the set-backs with the setup of the virtual environment due to limited access to computer resources.
