Best Practices for Securing Microsoft Windows Applications

With the changing dynamics of technology, applications have become insecure as they are exposed to malpractices such as hacking. In this regard, it is important for organizations to secure their applications, by making security an integral part of the organization’s security plan. Nowadays, the environment that most individuals think is secure, is not so secure unless the servers are hardened well ( Marshall et al., 2010) . Attackers are aware that servers store valuable information and programs that can be used to manipulate data. In this regard, a company will want to have a plan that foils assaults from the server and client levels. That plan starts with hardening the applications and making them as secure as possible. 

Keeping a system secure is a battle that never ends, and it is important for companies to keep monitoring their networks to ensure they are performing as expected. Though each company and each application is different, they all establish similar strategies to ensure that there are security controls that will foil attackers. To achieve this, an organization can adopt several practices. The first one is to ensure the hardening of the operating system. Hardening the OS involves configuring the operating system securely, creating policies and rules that govern the system, updating it and removing any unnecessary services and applications. 

Other practices that a company can use include ascertaining sensitive files and protecting them using encryption, ensuring that distinctive domain user accounts are created for each user, and ensure that passwords are enforced for every user. Consequently, an organization should ensure that they create new user accounts that have limited permission and rights for services, and that they restrict any service to run as the domain user admin. In addition, Kerberos can be used to secure authentication, and firewalls can also be installed to create a DMZ ( Marshall et al., 2010) . Lastly, all Web servers, Internet-facing servers, as well as publicly accessible servers, should be placed in the DMZ. 

Reference 

Marshall, A., Howard, M., Bugher, G., Harden, B., Kaufman, C., Rues, M., & Bertocci, V. (2010). Security best practices for developing windows azure applications. Microsoft Corp , 42.