Each policy is associated with one or more registry settings. When the administrator chooses to enforce a policy, the System Policies tool identifies registry changes that must be made and then makes the changes to the registries of the users and computers for which the policy applies. The administrator can specify policies for individual users, user groups, and individual computers. Default values can also be specified.
Policies have been implemented for most of the registry settings that an administrator might want to control and propagate. Although System Policies control only a subset of the registry, they are extensible. Application developers are encouraged to supply template files and implement policies for registry settings used by their products so that customers can plug the template files into a policy editor and control policies for the application.