About Windows security baselines (Basic) - Security Center 5.11

Security Center Hardening Guide 5.11

Product
Security Center
Content type
Guides > Administrator guides
Version
5.11
Language
English
Last updated
2023-03-13

A security baseline is a vetted collection of security-focused configuration settings for Windows and other Microsoft products.

To maximize security with increased flexibility and reduced cost, Microsoft recommends deploying an industry-standard security configuration, such as one of their security baselines. For more information about these configurations, refer to Microsoft Security Baselines.

We recommend using the Security Compliance Toolkit (SCT) to deploy the most recent security baseline for your version of Windows. The SCT is a set of tools provided by Microsoft to help deploy security baselines. For more information, refer to Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit 1.0.

Security baselines for supported versions of Windows and Windows Server include:

For other security baselines, see the Microsoft Security Baselines Blog.

SQL Server

Outside the security baselines, Microsoft has provided information and security guidance for SQL Server. For more information, refer to Securing SQL Server.