Topic: hardening
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Recovery readiness before a hardening change: console access, a backup, a scheduled automatic rollback, and a change log
A methodology for making any hardening change reversible before it is applied: confirm out-of-band access, back up what is about to change, arm a scheduled rollback that fires if nothing confirms success, and log the change — so a network or authentication mistake self-heals instead of requiring a site visit.
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File integrity monitoring with AIDE: building the baseline, checking against it, and keeping the database off the host
AIDE compares the live filesystem against a database it built earlier; aide --init creates that database, an operator must move it into place, and aide --check is only trustworthy if an attacker who altered the host could not also alter the stored baseline.
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Installing and hardening the built-in OpenSSH Server on Windows Server
Add-WindowsCapability installs the OpenSSH Server feature; sshd_config lives under %ProgramData%\ssh, an administrator's authorized keys must go in administrators_authorized_keys with a locked-down ACL or the server ignores them, and DefaultShell controls what an SSH session actually runs.
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CIS Benchmarks and DISA STIGs as a hardening baseline: what they are and how to apply them selectively
CIS Benchmarks and DISA STIGs are two independently maintained sets of configuration recommendations; both offer selectable profile levels rather than one fixed target. Applying a profile wholesale without recording exceptions is a common way hardening work breaks a production service.
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Scanning a Linux host against a baseline with OpenSCAP
oscap xccdf eval runs a SCAP Security Guide profile against a live host or an offline image and writes a human-readable report; reviewing the generated remediation script before running it is what keeps an automated scan from becoming an automated outage.
Machine-readable: JSON