-: In this section of the course, we're going to discuss
hardening your operating system, but what
exactly is hardening?
Hardening is the act of configuring an operating system
securely by updating it, creating rules and policies
to govern it, and removing unnecessary
applications and services.
Let's take a look at an example of hardening
in the real world.
Let's say you have a couple of errands to run today.
First, you get in your car and you go to the electronics
store and you buy yourself a brand new laptop.
You leave the store, you put the laptop in the backseat
of your car, and you drive to the grocery store.
Now, as you park your car at the grocery store, you're going
to do a few things to harden your car in an attempt
to prevent somebody from stealing your new laptop.
First, you might roll up the windows so they can't reach in
and take it easily.
Next, you'll lock the doors so they can't simply open
the door while you're in the store.
Finally, you set the car alarm so if anyone tries to get in,
the lights will flash and the horn will honk loudly.
You did all of this and does that mean you're ensuring
your laptop won't get stolen?
Well, of course not, because I could simply break your window
and take your laptop.
After all, we're not guaranteed security here, but instead,
what we've done is minimized the risk of theft by performing
some hardening actions.
The same holds true in the world of computers.
We can mitigate the risk by minimizing the vulnerabilities
in an effort to reduce our exposure to threats, but we can't
eliminate the risk completely.
Risk can only be minimized because there's always some kind
of threat and some kind of vulnerability in a given system.
Even if I have a new computer with all the latest software
patches and excellent anti-malware solution on it,
a zero-day vulnerability could still be discovered
and exploited by a malicious actor.
In this section, we're going to be focused on hardening
our systems and minimizing vulnerabilities.