CIS Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise Release 1909 Benchmark

18.9.61 Search

This section contains recommendations for Search settings.

This Group Policy section is provided by the Group Policy template Search.admx/adml that is included with all versions of the Microsoft Windows Administrative Templates.

18.9.61.1 OCR

This section is intentionally blank and exists to ensure the structure of Windows benchmarks is consistent.

This Group Policy section is provided by the Group Policy template SearchOCR.admx/adml that is only included with the Microsoft Windows 7 & Server 2008 R2 through the Windows 10 Release 1511 Administrative Templates. 18.9.61.2 (L2) Ensure 'Allow Cloud Search' is set to 'Enabled: Disable Cloud Search' (Scored)

ProfileApplicability:

 Level 2 (L2) - High Security/Sensitive Data Environment (limited functionality)

Description:

This policy setting allows search and Cortana to search cloud sources like OneDrive and SharePoint.

The recommended state for this setting is: Enabled: Disable Cloud Search .

Rationale:

Due to privacy concerns, data should never be sent to any 3rd party since this data could contain sensitive information.

Audit:

Navigate to the UI Path articulated in the Remediation section and confirm it is set as prescribed. This group policy setting is backed by the following registry location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search:AllowCloudSearch

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