Question

discuss a relevant issue regarding Hardening of Information Systems

Answer 1

Systems hardening is a collection of tools, techniques, and best practices to reduce vulnerability in technology applications, systems, infrastructure, firmware, and other areas. The goal of systems hardening is to reduce security risk by eliminating potential attack vectors and condensing the system’s attack surface. By removing superfluous programs, accounts functions, applications, ports, permissions, access, etc. attackers and malware have fewer opportunities to gain a foothold within your IT ecosystem.

The process of securing an operating system is referred to as “hardening” or at times as “lock down.”

Some basic hardening techniques include the following:

Non-essential services – It is of importance that an operating system can only be configured to perform tasks for which it is assigned. For example, it is not necessary to have SMTP or HTTP services run on the system only when a host is functioning as a mail server or web.

Fixes and Patches -This is an ongoing endeavor. Operating systems should be updated with the most recent security updates.

Password Management – Many operating systems provide options for strong passwords enforcement. This ensures that users are prevented from configuration of weak passwords which can be easily guessed. Additionally, users are able to regularly change passwords. User accounts are disabled after a number of failed attempts to login.

Unnecessary accounts – Unused user accounts that are unnecessary must be disabled or even deleted from the operating systems. It is crucial to monitor employee turnover; when the employees leave an organization their accounts should be disabled or deleted.

Directory and File Protection – There should be strict controlled measures put in place for accessing directories and files through use of file permissions and access control lists.

File System Encryption – Some file systems support encryption of files and folders. For additional security, it is vital to ensure that partitions in a hard disk are formatted together using a file system that supports encryption features like NTFS for Windows and so on. This should be applied to sensitive data.

Enable Logging – The Operating system should be configured to ensure logging of all errors, activities and warnings.

File Sharing – Unnecessary file sharing should be disabled

Hardening the Network- Different techniques can be used to achieve this such as updating hardware and software (This is a vital part of network hardening; it involves ensuring that the network firmware in the routers are updated regularly with the latest fixes and patches).

Password Protection – Wireless access points and routers have provisions for interfaces that allow the network to be remotely management and accessed. Such devices should therefore be protected by strong passwords.

Unnecessary Services and Protocols – All services and protocols that are unnecessary should be disabled; ideally, the hosts in the network should have such services and protocols deleted. A case in point is that, it is unnecessary to have protocols for AppleTalk installed and configured on any systems in a pure TCP/IP network environment.

Ports – Ports that are not needed should be blocked by a firewall and any associated services in the hosts in the network should be disabled. For example, it is not logical to allow traffic for port 80 to pass through the firewall in a network that has a host acting as a web server.

Wireless Security – There configured of wireless networks up to highest available security level.

Restricted Network Access – A number of steps should be taken in order to prevent unauthorized access to internal networks.