IBM Support

Linux Security Assessment

General Page

If your organization uses Linux, you can be faced with the challenge of securing your systems.  This security assessment offering, which requires only a few hours of your time, provides a comprehensive security analysis of a single Linux instance.  This offering is designed to identify security safeguards that can be implemented to mitigate security risk on your Linux systems.
Technical Details
  • This service assesses over 300 cybersecurity controls.  These 300 controls are globally accepted security best practices and hardening settings beneficial to any type of business or organization. 
  • This service can be provided for RHEL, CentOS, or SLES  on Power or Intel.
  • Over 50 CIS 7.1 controls assessed are globally accepted best practices for securing Linux infrastructures.
    For example, Does your organization require multi-factor authentication for all administrative access?
  • Over 250 CIS Linux Benchmark settings assessed are security hardening settings to be implemented on your Linux host. 
    For example, Verify the configuration of the SHA-512 password-hashing algorithm on the Linux host

Common Use Cases
  • A Linux Build team that would like to analyze their baseline image to identify more security hardening settings to add to their master image
  • An organization that would like to verify the security hardening status of Linux for critical business applications
  • An organization that would like to compare how security settings might differ between virtual machines built in different environments.  An example would be comparing a PROD host versus a QA or DEV host
  • A Linux manager that would like to verify the organization is in step with globally accepted security best practices for managing Linux environments
  • An organization that would like security remediation recommendations provided with guidance on priority and ordering
Service Details
  • Data analysis and report generation is done by IBM
  • This service requires only a few hours of customer time to run a data collection script and to attend a Webex session to review the results of the assessment
  • One or more Linux instances can be assessed, depending on consulting agreement terms
  • The assessment only reads existing security settings, that is, no settings are altered on the assessment host
Engagement Process
  • Consultant arranges prep call to discuss data collection process and to schedule Webex to review assessment results
  • Client uploads tar file to BOX
  • Consultant analyzes data and creates deliverables
  • Consultant reviews results with client on WEBEX
Deliverables
  1. Heat Map – the spreadsheet provides a one page view of the results of the assessment
  2. Security Assessment Findings – this PDF details the results of the assessment.  Over 300 security assessment results are detailed in this document.  The document provides a hyperlinked Table of Contents to quickly access any of the more than 300 security controls assessed
  3. Executive Summary – OPTIONAL – a short summary of the results of the assessment designed to be presented to executive management

For questions, please contact AIX/Linux Security consultant, Stephen Dominguez, at email

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Document Information

Modified date:
10 July 2024

UID

ibm16589591