AD 2012 R2 - Disable Windows Firewall Using Group Policy

So after a long hiatus I have decided to start blogging again. I am in the process of rebuilding my entire lab after a crash and I thought it would be good opportunity to start sharing some of my experiences in this process with you. I have several GPOs I use by default in my lab which make things a lot easier when working with different servers. One of which I have already posted. In GPO for Adding a Security Group to Local Administrators I talked about how to modify the Local Administrators group and add users or groups to it automatically. Another one I use is disabling the Windows Firewall via GPO.

This is a fairly straight forward policy. Open Group Policy Management, go to Domains > Your Domain > Right Click on Group Policy Objects and select New. In the Name field call it Disable Windows Firewall and Click OK.

Once you have the GPO created Right Click on it and choose Edit. There are two areas you want to modify. First go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Network > Network Connections > Windows Firewall > Domain Profile. Set Windows Firewall: Protect all network connections to Disabled

Then go into Standard Profile and do the same thing, set Windows Firewall: Protect all network connections to Disabled

If you check the settings you should have:

Link the GPO to your servers OU and do a GPUpdate /force on the server and you should see that the policy has taken effect:

More to come!

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