Throughout this book, you will be provided with the knowledge needed to protect your Windows environment and the users that access it. The book will cover a variety of topics that go beyond the hardening of just the operating system to include the management of devices, baselining, hardware, virtualization, networking, identity management, security operations, monitoring, auditing, and testing. The goal is to ensure that you understand the foundation of, and multiple layers involved in, providing improved protection for your Windows systems.

Since this book focuses on security, it's important to understand the core principles that form an information security model. These principles are known as the CIA triad, which stands for confidentiality, integrity, and availability. If you have pursued a security certification, such as the CISSP or Security+ certifications, you will be very familiar with this model. If not, it is recommended that you familiarize yourself with them as a security professional. This book will not go into detail about the CIA triad, but the concepts provided in this book will support the foundation of ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information on the Windows systems you manage. At a high level, CIA means the following:

• Confidentiality involves ensuring that no one other than those who are authorized to can access information.
• Integrity involves ensuring that the information being protected is original and has not been modified without the correct authorization.
• Availability involves ensuring that information is always available when access is needed.

This book is split into three sections to help guide you and provide the understanding and knowledge that's needed to implement a solid Windows security foundation within your organization. The first section will cover getting started and foundations for Windows security. The second section will focus on applying security and hardening with the third section providing information to protect, detect, and respond for Windows environments.