How to dramatically reduce your system's Attack Surface - Use Security Configuration Wizard

SCW is an abbreviation for Security Configuration Wizard which is a means of turning off the features of Windows Server that aren't required by YOUR applications.

SCW takes the guess work out of which services you can turn off, which network ports can be disabled, how much backward compatibility can be disabled and how IPsec can be enabled.

The beauty of SCW is that it ships with a knowledge base that contains definitions of the required functionality of the majority of Microsoft applications - hence removing the guesswork AND it can easily be extended (by adding XML knowledge base files) for third party applications too. 

SCW is an optional install option for Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1.

I know many of you are often too busy to try new software out as quickly as you'd like hence I'm recording a series of BlogCasts to SHOW you how to get benefit from SCW.

The install is really straight forward - click here to see for yourself.

There's a great deal of additional information available for Security Configuration Wizard at this link including details of how to extend the knowledge base.