Server Administration

Hey everyone! With ISO/IEC 27001:2022 being the gold standard for information security management, I’m curious—how many of you have had experience implementing it in your organizations? Whether you’re working in a large enterprise or managing smaller IT environments, aligning with ISO/IEC 27001 can be both a challenge and a huge win. What is ISO/IEC 27001?For those who might not be familiar, ISO/IEC 27001 outlines best practices for establishing, implementing, and continuously improving an Information Security Management System (ISMS). It’s essential for safeguarding sensitive data, managing risks, and meeting compliance requirements, especially in industries like healthc…

You are reading Part 57 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 6] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. A honeytoken is a decoy file, database record, or credential that is intentionally placed in a system to detect unauthorized access. Honeytokens act as digital tripwires and help: ✅ Detect insider threats - …

You are reading Part 56 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 6] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. A Data Retention Policy determines how long data is stored before being deleted. It helps: ✅ Reduce storage costs - Prevents unnecessary accumulation of old data. ✅ Minimize security risks - Lowers the risk …

You are reading Part 55 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 6] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) enforces the principle of least privilege, ensuring that users and applications only have the permissions they need to perform their functions. RBAC helps: ✅ Reduce security …

You are reading Part 54 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 6] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools collect, analyze, and correlate logs from multiple sources, providing a centralized view of security events. A SIEM system helps: ✅ Detect security thre…

You are reading Part 53 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 6] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. ExecShield is a Linux security feature that helps protect against buffer overflow, memory corruption, and exploit-based attacks by marking memory segments as non-executable. This prevents attackers from inje…

You are reading Part 52 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 6] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) ensures that your Linux server can quickly recover from: ✅ Hardware failures – Protects against disk crashes and server outages. ✅ Cybersecurity incidents – Ensures quick recov…

You are reading Part 51 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 6] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Compliance audits ensure that your Linux servers meet regulatory and security standards such as: 🔹 GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) – Requires data encryption, access logging, and privacy protection…

You are reading Part 50 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 5] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Grsecurity is a set of kernel patches that enhance Linux security by adding exploit mitigations, access controls, and protection against kernel vulnerabilities. It helps: ✅ Prevent privilege escalation attac…

You are reading Part 49 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 5] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Immutable infrastructure is a deployment model where servers and applications are never modified after deployment—instead, they are replaced with a new version whenever an update is needed. This approach off…

You are reading Part 48 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 5] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) are dedicated tamper-resistant devices designed to securely generate, store, and manage encryption keys. They offer: ✅ Stronger security – Prevents key exposure and unauthori…

You are reading Part 47 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 5] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools continuously monitor servers and endpoints for suspicious activity, malware, and potential security breaches. These tools provide: ✅ Real-time threat detection and…

You are reading Part 46 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 5] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Just-In-Time (JIT) Access Control enhances security by minimizing the attack surface by only granting temporary, time-limited access to users and applications when needed. This approach helps: ✅ Reduce the r…

You are reading Part 45 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 5] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. The Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmarks are industry-standard best practices for securing operating systems, applications, and cloud environments. Implementing CIS benchmarks ensures: ✅ Hardened se…

You are reading Part 44 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 5] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. A honeypot is a decoy system designed to attract and deceive attackers, allowing security teams to monitor, analyze, and learn from cyber threats without exposing production systems. Honeypots help: ✅ Detect…

You are reading Part 43 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 5] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Zero-Trust Architecture (ZTA) is a security model that assumes no implicit trust, every user, device, and request must be verified, authenticated, and authorized before gaining access. This approach helps: ✅…

You are reading Part 42 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 5] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Encrypting disk partitions ensures data remains protected even if the system is compromised or stolen. Disk encryption: ✅ Prevents unauthorized access to sensitive files. ✅ Protects against data theft from s…

You are reading Part 41 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 5] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Log analysis is a critical part of security monitoring that helps detect unauthorized access attempts, system anomalies, and potential security threats before they escalate. Regular log reviews allow you to:…

You are reading Part 40 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 4] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Databases store critical and sensitive data, making them prime targets for cyberattacks. Poorly secured databases can lead to: ✅ Data breaches – Unauthorized access to sensitive data. ✅ SQL injection attacks…

You are reading Part 39 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 4] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. A Bastion Host is a hardened server that acts as a secure gateway for accessing other internal or production servers. This reduces the attack surface by centralizing access control and monitoring. ✅ Adds an …

You are reading Part 38 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 4] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Linux file permissions (rwx) only allow owner, group, and others access controls, which can be limiting in multi-user environments. Access Control Lists (ACLs) provide more flexibility, allowing you to: ✅ Gr…

You are reading Part 37 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 4] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Penetration testing (pentesting) simulates real-world attacks to identify security vulnerabilities before attackers exploit them. Conducting regular pentests helps: ✅ Uncover misconfigurations, weak credenti…

You are reading Part 36 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 4] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Remote logging allows you to store system logs on a separate server, ensuring: ✅ Logs remain accessible even if a server is compromised or tampered with. ✅ Easier centralized monitoring and analysis for mult…

You are reading Part 35 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 4] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Auditbeat and Filebeat are part of Elastic's Beats suite, providing advanced logging, auditing, and real-time monitoring of system activity. These tools help: ✅ Monitor file integrity and detect unauthorized…

You are reading Part 34 of the 57-part series: Harden and Secure Linux Servers. [Level 4] This series covers progressive security measures, from fundamental hardening techniques to enterprise-grade defense strategies. Each article delves into a specific security practice, explaining its importance and providing step-by-step guidance for implementation. To explore more security best practices, visit the main guide for a full breakdown of all levels and recommendations. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) ensures that sensitive data remains protected from unauthorized access, accidental leaks, and intentional breaches. DLP is essential for: ✅ Preventing unauthorized file modificatio…