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System Hardening Checklist
Download The Decision Maker's Guide to System Hardening to gain actionable insights on building secure, compliant IT systems that deliver reliability at every layer.
What’s Inside:
- An easy, comprehensive checklist of system hardening measures
- Graphics and charts that simplify abstract system hardening concepts
- The primary ways to harden systems at key layers, from servers and VMs to OS and apps
- Best practices for building a long-term, continuously enforceable system hardening strategy using automation
Download this Guide If:
- You’re trying to keep systems hardened with MFA, RBAC, and more
- Safeguarding critical infrastructure is part of your job
- You’re responsible for ensuring compliance
- You’re constantly chasing down drifted configurations for system hardening measures
- You’re a visual learner needing to wrap your head around system hardening
Learn the Building Blocks of Solid System Hardening
System security is like a sliding puzzle. Each piece is a configuration or practice that can make your system more secure if it’s in the right place and orientation.
System hardening is like having a picture of the completed puzzle. You might need to do some things differently to accommodate your particular pieces, but you can see how each piece needs to fit together to make it work. Then, when security standards evolve, a new regulation appears, or you replace elements of your tech stack, you can update and swap pieces to preserve security and compliance.
These frequently asked questions explain how the System Hardening Checklist helps teams reduce risk, improve consistency, and prepare for compliance.
System hardening is the process of reducing your attack surface by configuring operating systems, applications, and infrastructure according to security best practices and compliance standards. It helps organizations lower risk, prevent misconfigurations, and meet regulatory requirements more confidently.
System hardening is essential for cybersecurity, driven by the expanding digital landscape and the growing sophistication of cyber threats. With vulnerabilities increasing yearly, organizations must implement robust security measures across diverse environments to comply with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS.
Beyond security and compliance, system hardening enhances IT resilience, aligning with business priorities while fostering trust among customers, partners, and investors.
A strong hardening strategy reduces risks, ensures regulatory adherence, and safeguards digital assets—key pillars of building resilient IT in today’s threat landscape.
This checklist is designed for platform engineering, DevOps, IT operations, and security teams responsible for maintaining secure, compliant systems across on-prem, cloud, and hybrid environments. It’s also useful for security leaders who want visibility into hardening gaps and risk exposure.
The checklist is informed by widely recognized security hardening best practices and common compliance frameworks, such as CIS Benchmarks and internal security policies. It’s designed to help teams assess where they stand, not replace formal audits.
By downloading this checklist you will gain access to tips, tools, and best practices for employing hardening measures in key system components:
- Servers
- Operating systems
- Networks
- Apps
- Databases
- Physical
Scripts don’t scale. Most systems don’t run on just one operating system, so you’d need custom scripts to configure and enforce system hardening measures on every different one.
When automation engineers leave, they take the keys to your empire of scripts with them.
Lightweight automation tools often rely on network access to enforce configurations, which can itself leave security gaps (SSH, remote access, etc.).
Free tools don’t show you the big picture or the little changes that lead to hardening gaps.