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Difficulty: MediumWorkstation Hardening and Best Practices

An IT security technician is establishing baseline OS hardening parameters for new workstations deployed in an enterprise accounting department. To reduce the system's attack surface and prevent unauthorized remote modification of system configuration settings without impacting standard domain functionality, which of the following actions should the technician perform?

  1. Disable the Remote Registry service and set its startup type to Disabled.Answer
  2. B
    Configure Windows Defender Firewall to block all outgoing HTTPS traffic on port 443.
  3. C
    Use Event Viewer to clear the Security Log whenever suspicious registry access attempts occur.
  4. D
    Adjust settings within the Indexing Options Control Panel applet to block remote service permissions.

Answer

Disable the Remote Registry service and set its startup type to Disabled.
Disabling the Remote Registry service is an essential workstation hardening practice. It ensures remote network users cannot modify system configuration keys in the Windows Registry, effectively shrinking the vulnerable surface area of the host OS.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the security objective in the scenario
The requirement is to prevent unauthorized remote configuration modifications while reducing unnecessary listening services on the host.
System hardening principles emphasize disabling unneeded background services to minimize attack vectors.
2
Identify unnecessary background services that expose system configuration
The Remote Registry service allows remote network users to edit registry keys.
If left enabled, malicious actors could modify registry entries remotely over the network.
3
Apply the appropriate baseline security hardening action
Stopping the service and configuring its startup type to Disabled prevents unauthorized remote registry changes.
Disabling unneeded network-facing services is a standard OS baseline hardening task.

Key Concept

Disabling Unnecessary Services during Workstation Hardening
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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Topics

Workstation Hardening and Best Practices

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