Configuration Gaps Are Growing — and Getting Costlier
System hardening means securing your critical infrastructure against a configuration baseline that can be audited, enforced, and maintained over time. But as environments sprawl across cloud, hybrid, Linux, Windows, and on-prem systems, staying aligned to evolving system hardening standards gets harder with every patch, deployment, and configuration change.
Security leaders are tracking a record volume of new vulnerabilities this year, and the regulatory picture is tightening: CMMC 2.0 now gates federal contract eligibility, HIPAA enforcement actions have surged, and PCI DSS 4.0 timelines are no longer theoretical. Configuration drift that goes undetected doesn't just create risk, it creates liability.
Most organizations don't know exactly where their configurations have drifted until something goes wrong. That's why many teams are investing in stronger security configuration management practices and building a more proactive security hardening strategy.
Take the free System Hardening Assessment to benchmark your infrastructure against CIS Benchmark and DISA STIG alignment principles and see exactly where the gaps are.
See Exactly Where Your Defenses Could Fail
The assessment covers the foundational controls that define a hardened environment and provides practical system hardening examples teams can use to strengthen infrastructure hardening initiatives:
Server Hardening
Evaluate server hardening practices related to privileged access, MFA enforcement, and security configuration management.
Operation System Hardening
Assess OS hardening and configuration management practices against CIS Benchmark and DISA STIG alignment principles.
Network Security
Evaluate network security and access control practices that may increase exposure to configuration drift or unauthorized access.
Application Hardening
Assess application hardening practices related to least privilege, access controls, and secure configuration standards.
Database Hardening
Evaluate database hardening practices related to encryption, privileged access, and secure configuration management.
Each area maps to established compliance frameworks, helping support broader system security assessment initiatives and ongoing security hardening audit efforts. The assessment also helps evaluate whether your current tooling supports effective configuration drift remediation and aligns with the capabilities expected from a modern hardening compliance tool. H3: Security Policies Only Protect You If They're Consistently Enforced
It's common for organizations to establish strong security policies and still find themselves out of compliance. Developer changes, surprise updates, and infrastructure growth can silently cause configuration drifts.
Without visibility into your current hardening posture, it's difficult to know:
- Whether systems are still aligned to the standards you set.
- Where compliance exposure exists across your environment.
- Which gaps pose the most immediate remediation priority.
The System Hardening Assessment gives you a clear, actionable picture of where you stand — so you can prioritize with confidence, not guesswork.
See Where Your Environment Stands
Take the free System Hardening Assessment and receive a personalized evaluation of your configuration baseline practices against CIS Benchmark and DISA STIG alignment principles. Need help turning your results into a remediation plan? A Puppet solutions engineer can walk you through where to focus first and how to strengthen continuous compliance efforts across your infrastructure.
Get My Free Hardening Assessment
Your assessment data is never stored or shared.