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Difficulty: HardWorkstation Hardening and Best Practices

A system administrator is tasked with hardening standalone Windows workstations deployed in a building lobby for public visitor registration. The workstations must be secured against unauthorized access, privilege escalation, and automated malicious code execution from external drives. Which TWO of the following account and system policy configurations should the administrator implement to meet these hardening requirements?

  1. Disable AutoPlay and AutoRun policies across all removable storage drives.Answer
  2. Disable the built-in Guest account and rename the default local Administrator account.Answer
  3. C
    Assign public visitor accounts to the local Administrators group while enabling User Account Control (UAC) to prompt for credentials.
  4. D
    Use the Event Viewer administrative snap-in to filter and block unauthorized incoming network connections.

Answer

The correct hardening controls are disabling AutoPlay/AutoRun policies across removable drives and disabling the built-in Guest account while renaming the default Administrator account.
Hardening standalone workstations requires minimizing attack vectors. Disabling AutoPlay and AutoRun prevents malicious software on inserted drives from executing without user intervention. Disabling the built-in Guest account and renaming the default Administrator account removes known default attack paths and reduces the risk of credential brute-forcing.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the risk associated with physical access to external ports on public terminals.
Recognize that external flash drives can launch scripts automatically unless AutoPlay and AutoRun policies are restricted.
Preventing automated execution reduces the local attack vector from physical media.
2
Evaluate local account hardening best practices for standalone systems.
Identify that disabling the default Guest account and renaming the default Administrator account reduces attack surface.
Standard account names like 'Administrator' are primary targets for automated credential attacks and unauthorized access.
3
Validate distractors against security fundamentals and administrative tool functions.
Reject elevated group assignments for visitors and rule out Event Viewer for firewall packet filtering.
Least privilege principles dictate standard user rights, and firewall filtering requires host security utilities rather than event logging tools.

Key Concept

Workstation account and policy hardening best practices
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Topics

Workstation Hardening and Best Practices

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