Windows supports auditing of various account- and system-related events, which can be invaluable when troubleshooting a security incident. You can enable auditing of nine different types of access on a local server. You can also configure these settings via an Active Directory group policy, which overrides any local settings that you’ve defined. After auditing has been configured, audit messages are created in the Security event log.

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The Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) is a freely available tool from Microsoft that let’s you scan computers for the latest security problems with Windows along with numerous Microsoft products. Some of these include Office, Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft Virtual Machine, and BizTalk. It can also check the configuration of Internet Configuration Firewall, Automatic Updates, and password settings.

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