It’s been around for some time and if you did not already know about it Microsoft provide the free tool called Security Compliance Manager. You can use it to very easily manage and export a set of pre-configured (or settings that you configure on your own) settings that improve security. You can then export these settings to for instance a group policy and import it into your domain.
There are templates with pre-configured security lockdowns for Windows XP, Windows Vista and of course also Windows 7. The tool works great for creating a security baseline for your client machines but the only downside is that you cannot import nor in a convenient way compare the settings in the templates with what you currently have.