It’s part of an aggressive security strategy push by the White House to move agencies from thousands of possible configurations for Microsoft Windows operating systems to just one. A universal configuration improves security while reducing operating costs, Office of Management and Budget e-government administrator Karen Evans has said.
The new site shows an image of what the standard configuration should be. Agencies can test their applications against it to see what they need to fix or change in order to comply with requirements.
Information technology leaders from NIST and the Defense and Homeland Security departments developed the test image for Microsoft XP and Vista.
“This resource facilitates agencies’ efforts to implement common security configurations, which will boost government’s information security, improve system performance, and decrease operating costs,” Evans said in a statement. “We encourage new collaborative efforts, such as this one, with both public- and private-sector partners to support agency adoption of the Microsoft XP and Vista configurations.”
The National Checklist Program, also operated by NIST, is working with private-sector IT contractors on standardizing security settings for a wide variety of products and environments. NIST maintains more than 120 common security configuration guides used by agencies.
Autor(en)/Author(s): M.Z. Hemingway
Quelle/Source: Federal Times, 02.08.2007
