Testing Security Policies and Rolling Out a Pilot Project

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Before you deploy your security policy solution to your organization, be sure to test the configuration in a test environment and follow security policy best practices that are outlined in this chapter and in Help and Support Center for Windows Server 2003. If you have problems with your configuration, it is much easier to correct them in a non-production environment than after you deploy the configuration to your servers and clients. For more information about staging and testing Group Policy, see "Staging Group Policy Deployments" in this book.

Test customized security templates before you apply them

Do not apply the predefined security templates to production computers without first testing your customized version to make sure that the appropriate level of application functionality is maintained for the network and computer architecture.

Make sure that automatic Startup services start correctly

If you set the Startup service to start automatically, you must perform adequate testing to verify that the services can start without user intervention. For more information about setting the Startup service to start automatically, see "Configure how a service is started" in Help and Support Center for Windows Server 2003.

For more information about testing, see "Designing a Test Environment" in Planning, Testing, and Piloting Deployment Projects of this kit.