System Hardening: An Easy-to-Understand Overview

System hardening is all about protecting your server or workstation.

Did you know that the U.S. government allocated an estimated $18.78 billion for cybersecurity spending in 2021?

The reason why is made clear in the U.S. Department of Defense's Cyber Strategy Report:

Competitors deterred from engaging the United States and our allies in an armed conflict are using cyberspace operations to steal our technology, disrupt our government and commerce, challenge our democratic processes, and threaten our critical infrastructure.

As such, many companies supporting and selling servers and workstations to the DoD are turning to advanced system hardening tools and best practices to improve the security of their servers and other computer systems, oftentimes as a prerequisite for doing business with the DoD.

In this blog post, we'll discuss system hardening, its importance, the types of system hardening

System hardening involves reducing a server's or workstation's attack surface.

What does system hardening mean?

System hardening is the process of securing a server or computer system by minimizing its attack surface, or surface of vulnerability, and potential attack vectors. It’s a form of cyberattack protection that involves closing system loopholes that cyberattackers frequently use to exploit the system and gain access to users’ sensitive data.

One official definition of system hardening, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is that it’s “a process intended to eliminate a means of attack by patching vulnerabilities and turning off non-essential services.”

Part of the system hardening elimination process involves deleting or disabling needless system applications, permissions, ports, user accounts, and other features so that attackers have fewer opportunities to gain access to a mission-critical or critical-infrastructure computer system's sensitive information.

But at its core, system hardening is a method for protecting a system against attacks perpetrated by cybercriminals. It involves securing a computer system’s software mainly but also its firmware and other system elements to reduce vulnerabilities and a potential compromise of the entire system.

Now you know why system hardening exists, but you might be wondering about its practical purpose and why businesses and organizations implement system hardening practices.

The basic purpose of implementing system hardening techniques and practices is to simply minimize the number of potential entryways an attacker could use to access your system and to do so from inception. This is oftentimes referred to as following a secure-by-design philosophy.

There are a few different types of system hardening, but they're all interrelated.

What are the types of system hardening?

System hardening involves securing not only a computer’s software applications, including the operating system, but also its firmware, databases, networks, and other critical elements of a given computer system that an attacker could exploit.

There are five main types of system hardening:

•             Server hardening

•             Software application hardening

•             Operating system hardening

•             Database hardening

•             Network hardening

It’s important to note that the types of system hardening are broad enough to be universal and translate well across different server and computer system configurations; however, the methods and tools used to practically achieve a hardened or secure-by-design state vary widely.

Relevant Blogs:

Types of system hardening

What is some system hardening standards

OS Hardening: 10 Best Practices

Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmarks for OS Security