Leveraging Security Compliance Manager

In July 2016, Microsoft updated a well known tool called Microsoft Security Compliance Manager 4.0 (SCM) to manage baselines. With SCM, you can download prebuilt baselines, clone and edit for your own use, compare to Microsoft defaults, and, most importantly, export a cab file to be imported into CM to make new baselines.

SCM itself hasn't been changed much since the previous version (SCM 3.0) but the content has always been updated and baselines for the latest version of Windows 10 (build 1511 at the time of writing) are available for download within the tool:

CM gives you the ability to do revisions of baselines so that as you change them over time, you can phase out old ones and enforce or report on new ones. But we advise you to maintain the same revisions in SCM so that you can fully leverage its full capabilities.

Note

On top of SCM baselines, Microsoft provides another type of baselines in System Center Configuration Manager Vulnerability Assessment...