In a news article at The Register, the US Government is going to have a standard hardened set of settings of Windows OS’s that they will require vendors to install.

From TFA:

“The purchasing power attached to the $65bn federal IT spending budget means that suppliers will have no choice but to take notice.”

Right on!  I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.  You have the 8000-lb gorilla of IT budgets sitting back, buying all this junk from people and then not doing anything about the poor quality of it.  About a year ago, I started teaching government employees in my classes that they had the power to ask for better software, and I think the idea is starting to sink in.

Now they have to do me proud and not make the settings a watered-down weak version of what they should be.  My one fear is that this will be hardening by committee, where you have all these people who show up out of nowhere to complain that one hardening setting or another breaks the functionality they absolutely need to not harden that part of the OS.  The problem with that is you end up with hardening holes.

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