With Group Policies, you can customize your computer system to fully implement your Acceptable Usage Policy. You can lockdown computers so that users have very little access to do anything but a few pre-defined tasks. This is a good solution for public kiosk computers, libraries, internet cafes and educational labs. You can implement policies based on the user group. For example, a business might want to put system restrictions on the Sales and Receptionist groups, but not on the Managers or Executive groups.

You can configure a logon banner stating the company’s Acceptable Usage Policy for the computer system. This logon banner will inform the user that all files, information, and data stored on the company computers belongs to the company and the user waives their right to privacy on the system. This is important because if management ever needs to investigate an issue regarding the computers, an employee could claim that their Fourth Amendment rights had been violated and the evidence gathered could be inadmissible in a court of law.

Group Policies can also help standardize your system. You can set your preferences on Internet Explorer, set security settings, and even display your company’s logo on the top right-hand side. On the desktop, you can ensure that users do not change their screen resolution or their desktop settings. You can define password, lockout, and audit policies for the domain. You can also set security policies across the domain like preventing normal users from logging on to the server and attempting to change system settings.

Imagine this scenario: you have 25 new computers and need to install Microsoft Office on each of them. Each time you install, you must choose specific settings such as where the installer files are located and which components should be installed. Instead of walking around to each computer, inserting the CD, and running the software you can use software deployment to create a file that stores all of your organization settings on how it should be installed and then automatically deploy Microsoft Office so that it installs itself on each computer.