Securing the infrastructure

Infrastructure hardening is a vital step in making your operational environment and system more secure.

The hardening process, especially for systems as complex as an operating system, database management systems, or application servers, involve many small but detailed steps. These steps range from removing or disabling unneeded or insecure services and restricting access to critical resources to applying the latest software patches.

Since the infrastructure components are not IBM products, we defer to industry best practices, especially when the guidance and recommendations are open, consensus developed, and peer reviewed. Fortunately, the Center for Internet Security (CIS) and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) have developed comprehensive hardening checklists.