I recently started running a Win 2000 box with IIS 5 and looking to get some recommendations on the best way to secure it. I am looking to get ideas on monitoring/intrusion, virus protection, SMTP mail virus protection (running IPswitch Imail), software based firewall, strengthening IIS security, etc. Let me know what is working for you.

Thank you in advance for your time.

Microsoft's technet is the best place to start

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/prodtech/windows/windows2000/staysecure/default.asp


Good luck with it

Cheers
Balaji

..get the latest patches, subscribe to Microsoft' Security Bulletin and make sure you have at least SP2 on.

As for Software based firewall's you can give Tiny Firewall a try or alternatively, spend some time and tweak the built-in win2k packet filtering..

cheers

welcome to my daily nightmare.

I would advise the following software free from MS

microsoft baseline security analizer

run that

do every step

also get rid of every service you don't need

also get signed up on the security bulletin's ( someone else mentined it )

then sign up to cert for advisories.

once you got that done

TUNE THE SERVER FOR MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE. your tight and your slow at first. tune the server. then add one piece of security at a time. .... you'll win at the end and have a high performance system.

also note that http compress will not work all the time properly if your servers have Cold Fusion and MSSQL. I got the bug myself and can not find the solution to it. it's costing me about 30% extra bandwidth because I can not compress the http output from the server.

mike


drop me a line and I'll post the free stuff
you need for security monitoring.



also don't forget to close off your relaying otherwise you'll end up blacklisted

It's not possible to secure Window$

Originally posted by Shyne
It's not possible to secure Window$

LOL that was good, but your right, you have to daily look at your logs and always check everything 2 times. I can easyily loose 4 hours just reviewing a few oddball things.

Mike

It's not possible to secure Window$Thank goodness that is not true :)

Everything has holes in it, the only way to secure anything 100% is to unplug it from the internet and leave it sitting in a room with no external communication devices attached to it.

If they code it, we will crack it.
If they secure it, we will break in.
If they patch it, we will find a new hole.

Period :)