Remote desktop management
Most Windows environments use tools such as RDP to perform remote management. When using features such as RDP, one of the recommendations is to enable Network Level Authentication (NLA). NLA provides an extra layer of pre-authentication before a connection is established and ensures that information about the system is not exposed before the user has successfully authenticated. We can verify whether NLA is enabled on a machine by opening System Properties and going to the Remote tab, as shown in the following screenshot:
Figure 10.2 – NLA setting for RDP
Note
I do not recommend using RDP to perform remote management; you should have either a third-party service or use cloud services, such as Azure Bastion, or a tool such as Windows Admin Center that supports Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). There are also other new alternatives, such as Cloudflare Zero Trust or Hashicorp Boundary; these options also support integrating...