One year of Windows XP support remains. After twelve years, now is the time to migrate off this 2001 Operating System or to take your security measures to assure your colleagues experience the least impact of the End of Support (EoS) situation. Of course, migrating to a later version of Windows or to another (supported) Operating System is the ...

Windows Server 2012 introduces a new Group Policy feature: ‘Infrastructure Status’. This feature is present in the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) on Windows Server 2012 and in the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) package for Windows 8, and introduces a Status tab for the domain level. This tab is shown in the screenshot below: ...

On September 20, the Dutch Networking User Group (NGN) organized an event on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. During this day, several speakers provides inspiration, information and guidance on implementing and managing Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Speakers at this event includes Ruben Spruijt, Raymond Comvalius, Alex de Jong, Roel van ...

Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 offer a lot of new functionality. Of course, a lot of this functionality can be centrally managed with Active Directory through Group Policy. But how do you find the Group Policy settings that are new to these two Operating Systems? How do you find that specific Group Policy setting you need to accomplish your ...

Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 are cloud-optimized Operating Systems. One of the areas where this is visible is the ability to connect domain accounts to Microsoft accounts (formerly known as Windows Live IDs). In this blogpost I’ll show you how this functionality works and how you can disable this functionality altogether or granularly with ...

For ages, organizations deploying Windows installations wanted a uniform look for their machines, to work on their professional image towards employees, partners and customers. Now, in Windows 8, a couple of new Group Policy settings have been introduced to centrally manage the new user interface features. In this blogpost I’ll discuss the five ...

Windows 8 offers new Group Policy settings to protect the privacy of the people using the computer, and also comes with a slew of new security features, that (surprise, surprise!) can also be centrally managed with Group Policy. 1. Turn off Windows Location Provider This policy setting, located in Computer configuration, Administrative ...

With wireless connectivity getting available in an increasing number of countries and locations, the business value of having access to wireless networks on the go (whether they are 3G or 4G networks) is getting more clear. However, where some of the providers still offer flat fee subscriptions, most of them these days work with a data usage cap. ...

Being one of the first companies to roll out Windows 8 to our employees and aiming to be done with the deployment before October 26nd 2012 (the date Windows 8 becomes available to everyone on new computers), we’re looking at Group Policy settings to make Windows 8 as usable and recognizable as possible to our colleagues. In this blogpost I’ll ...

As I've mentioned here before,my company, SDM Software, is focused on making Group Policy a lot easier for folks to manage. Given the criticality of Group Policy as a security and desktop lockdown technology, making sure its healthy and functional has ramifications for the security posture of an organization as well as regulatory compliance ...