Resetting Security Policy

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The tool allows you to reset all of security policy or individual policy levels to the default policy state. The default policy has been designed to protect against security transgressions by any code from the Internet or intranet. If you have discovered flaws in your current policy design, a return to default policy is of a good starting point for redrafting your security policy, because you are starting from a known safe origin. Of course, the drawback of resetting security policy is that you will lose any policy customizations you may have made to the affected policy levels.

TIP

You can make a backup copy of your old policy state even after you have reset security policy, although you must not have made any other changes after the reset. The following files always contain the security policy state just before the most recent policy change to the respective policy level.

Security Configuration Backup File locations include:

• Enterprise-level configuration file ” %WINDIR% \Microsoft.NET\Framework\v[ version number ]\Config\Enterprisesec.config.old

• Machine-level configuration file ” %WINDIR% \Microsoft.NET\Framework\v[ version ]\Config\security.config.old

• User -level configuration file

  Windows NT/2000/XP ” %USERPROFILE% \Application data\Microsoft\CLR security config\v[ version ]\Security.config.old

  Windows 95/98 ” %WINDIR% \username\CLR security config\vxx.xx\Security.config.old

Depending on the OS you are running on, %WINDIR% will either be the \Windows or \WINNT directory on your system. The %USERPROFILE% directory stands for your Documents and Settings\ username folder. Note that the Application data folder is a hidden folder.

You can use the tool's Open function to browse and access your backup copy at a later point. See the "Modeling Policy Changes Using Open and New" section earlier in this chapter.

If you want to reset all of the security policy to its default state, simply right-click the Runtime Security Policy node and select the Reset All option.

If you want to reset only a particular policy level to its default policy state, you need to expand the Runtime Security Policy node, right-click the respective policy level, and select the Reset option.

NOTE

If you use the tool to do a full reset of security policy (Reset All), the tool will set the enterprise and machine policy on the respective machine to its default state, if the user in whose user context the tool is running has write access to the policy files. In addition, the user policy corresponding to the current user context is reset to its default state. No other user's policy is touched. Thus, doing a Reset All will still leave in place policy customizations that other users have done.

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