## Security Policies

The term policy has several contexts within Windows NT security. These include account and password policies that affect how and when an account can be used in addition to user policies or computer policies that are downloaded to computers when logging on to the network.

With account and password policies, Windows NT allows the administrator to control many aspects of an account including how passwords are used. For example, accounts can be locked out after a certain number of failed logon attempts preventing "brute-force attacks"; passwords can be retired on a regular basis; a password uniqueness database can be maintained to prevent users from reusing passwords; and users can be restricted to using certain computer's for specified periods of time.

Windows NT also has user and computer policies that are collections of security and graphical user interface (GUI) settings downloaded to a computer when a user logs on. For example, a user policy can restrict a user to a specific set of applications. Computer policies function in a similar manner. These policies are actually a collection of registry settings that are downloaded into the local computer's registry from a Windows NT server.

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Last Updated: December 1, 1997