System Hardening

Hardening turns out-of-the-box systems into resilient ones by disabling unused services, removing default accounts, applying least privilege, enforcing strong authentication, enabling encryption, configuring logging, and restricting network exposure. It applies to operating systems, applications, databases, containers, cloud services, network devices, and firmware. Practitioners reference benchmarks such as CIS, DISA STIG, NIST SP 800-53, and vendor hardening guides, then automate the controls through configuration management. Hardening complements patching: even a fully patched system can be exploited if it is misconfigured or runs unnecessary functionality.