UNIX Security Essentials

Content Leader: Jess Garcia - Last Updated: May 21, 2007

Hardening

The best and easiest way to harden a system is to follow the industry best practices. The following references provide guidelines that allow you to easily apply those best practices to your system.

• The Center for Internet Security Benchmarks.
• The NSA Security Configuration Guides.
• The NIST Practices & Checklists / Implementation Guides.
• The DISA UNIX Security Checklist

The following free tools can help you harden your UNIX systems:

• Bastille allows you to easily lock down several UNIX variants (Linux, OS X, HPUX, etc.).

Security Evaluation & Auditing

Right after you have hardened a system, and periodically thereafter, you will want to verify how secure it is. You can use the following free tools for that purpose:

• The Center for Internet Security provides free tools to check the security of many UNIX variants (FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, OS X, etc.).