Which of the following is a hardening technique that an administrator would perform when creating a standard VM template that would be used for deploying servers in a production environment?

Creating a standard user account is part of user access management or configuration for the OS, not a primary hardening technique for the foundational template itself.

Disabling unneeded services is a specific technical hardening action performed *within* the template, but 'following change management process' is the broader technique that ensures such technical steps are consistently and securely applied and maintained for a production template's integrity.

Establishing a performance baseline is a task related to monitoring and performance optimization, not a security hardening technique.

Following a change management process is a critical administrative control that ensures all security configurations, including hardening measures, applied to the VM template are formally reviewed, approved, tested, and documented. This process maintains the template's hardened state throughout its lifecycle and prevents unauthorized or insecure changes.