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Create, Manage, & Enforce Laptop Policies for IT

IT administrators must create and enforce policies to manage and secure end users’ laptops, especially as more employees work outside the confines of traditional office settings.

This work should start with written and agreed upon policies that outline how devices will be configured, particularly for organizations that must meet compliance regulations. This also helps standardize onboarding as new users and new devices join the organization, whether they’re working from home or at an office site. Then, you can identify a solution to implement those policies across your laptops, regardless of operating system.

In this article, you’ll get an overview of relevant security policies and tools to implement them at scale across the Windows^®, Mac^®, and Linux^® devices you manage.

Standard Laptop Security Policies

Although policies will differ based on your IT environment, you can start with industry-standard policies to lock down and configure laptops. Use a gap analysis if you want to meet a specific compliance standard and identify areas you need to address with additional policies. Here are some policies you can use as a baseline for internal security as well as compliance:

• Create local user accounts with a core identity for each user
• Create a consistent administrator account on each laptop
• Have the ability to lock and shut down laptops remotely
• Enforce full-disk encryption (FDE)
• Set a screen lock timer (i.e., 120 seconds)
• Disable access to unnecessary features, such as the App Store, control panel, or system preferences
• Manage and monitor patching and updates 
• Establish password complexity requirements
• Require multi-factor authentication (MFA) at login
• Prompt users to change their core passwords on their laptops (rather than via web forms or emails)

Once you create laptop policies, you then need to manage and enforce them at scale. If you have a heterogeneous environment, you’ll have to decide whether you want to use point solutions or an all-in-one solution to manage your laptops. 

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