What is the NSA? What are the NSA Security Guides? Where can I download the NSA Security guides?
I’m not sure you really really want to know what the NSA is, but if you insist – here you go:
The National Security Agency is the U.S.’s cryptologic organization. It coordinates, directs, and performs highly specialized activities to protect U.S. information systems and produce foreign intelligence information. A high technology organization, NSA is on the frontiers of communications and data processing. It is also one of the most important centers of foreign language analysis and research within the Government.
NSA has developed and distributed configuration guidance for Microsoft Windows NT in the form of NT configuration guides. These guides are currently being used throughout the government and by numerous entities as a security baseline for their NT systems.
To assist our Windows 2000/2003 user community, NSA has developed security configuration guidance for Windows 2000/2003, with the cooperation of the other government agencies and industry partners who provided their expertise and extensive technical review. The configuration guides for Microsoft Windows 2000/2003 are being posted on the NSA web site and are presented in three parts: ".INF" files, configuration guides, and supporting documents.
Besides Windows security guides you can also download and read guides for other operating systems, server applications (such as Exchange), web servers (Apache, IIS) and firewall products.
