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Security Intermediate

What is Security Hardening?

The process of reducing a system's attack surface by disabling unnecessary services, applying patches, and configuring security controls.

Security hardening systematically reduces vulnerabilities in servers, applications, and networks. Steps include removing unused software and services, applying security patches promptly, configuring firewalls (deny by default), enabling SELinux/AppArmor, setting strong password policies, disabling root SSH login, using key-based authentication, implementing file integrity monitoring, securing boot processes, and following CIS Benchmarks. For web servers: disable directory listing, remove version headers, configure secure TLS ciphers, set security headers (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options). Hardening should be automated through configuration management tools (Ansible, Chef) and validated regularly through vulnerability scanning.

Related Terms

Webhook Signature Verification
A security mechanism that verifies webhook payloads are authentic and unmodified using cryptographic signatures.
Brute Force Attack
An attack method that systematically tries all possible combinations of passwords or keys until the correct one is found.
PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)
A framework of policies, hardware, and software for creating, managing, distributing, and revoking digital certificates.
SAST (Static Application Security Testing)
Automated analysis of source code to find security vulnerabilities without executing the application.
CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery)
An attack that tricks authenticated users into submitting unwanted requests to a web application they are logged into.
Security Headers
HTTP response headers that instruct browsers to enable security features like XSS protection, framing prevention, and content type enforcement.
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