The PCI Security Standards Council requires all payment processors and merchants to move to TLS 1.2 and above. Organizations that don’t follow this standard do not meet PCI DSS.

The NIST SP 800-123 Guide to General Server Security contains NIST recommendations on how to secure your servers. It offers general advice and guideline on how you should approach this mission. Its aim is to assist organizations in understanding the fundamental activities they nee dto undertake to secure their servers. Regulations such as HIPAA, HITRUST, CMMC, and many others rely on those recommendations, demanding organizations to enforce and comply with the guide.

Print Spooler is a component integrated into the Windows operating system, designed to temporarily hold print jobs in the computer’s memory until the printer is prepared to execute them.

Windows Task Scheduler, previously known as Scheduled Tasks, is a powerful job scheduler built into Microsoft Windows. Its primary function is to launch computer programs or scripts at specific times or intervals predetermined by the user. Introduced as System Agent in Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95, Task Scheduler Windows has evolved into a core component of the Windows operating system.

When planning a hardening project for information security, there are two types of impact analysis to consider – policy impact analysis and security impact analysis. Policy impact analysis refers to generating a report that indicates each policy rule’s impact on your production. It is especially important for avoiding system downtime caused by configuration changes. The second type of impact analysis is Security Impact Analysis.

Setting and enforcing a policy for strong passwords should be a top priority for organizations in their cyber hygiene practice. Best practices and recommendations keep being updated since this issue is so critical for attack prevention. In fact, compromised passwords are responsible for 81% of successful attacks.

Best practices for mitigating various attack vectors are changing depending on the environment and server functionality. CIS baselines cover most of the relevant scenarios by addressing the first stage of your Windows server hardening project. Microsoft has been doing some work related to default security configuration, but there is still a big gap between security best practices (i.e. common benchmarks) and the default Windows configuration.

Server hardening refers to the actions performed to reduce the server OS and application attack surface. this is done by changing the default configurations of the system’s components (servers, applications, etc.) and removing unnecessary components. Out of the box, Server OS are more function-oriented rather than for security, which means that unnecessary functions are enabled. Default, insecure configurations reflect a potential attack vector.

A correlation between ATT&CK Mitigations and CIS Controls, often termed as a ‘high-level’ mapping, show case the count of mapped ATT&CK (Sub-)Techniques within each ATT&CK Mitigation. Additionally, it provides the total number of ATT&CK (Sub-)Techniques associated with the respective ATT&CK Mitigation. Mitre attack mapping accurately and consistently maps adversary behaviors relevant to ATT&CK techniques as part of cyber threat intelligence (CTI).

Group Policies are part of every Active Directory. Group Policy (GP) is designed to be able to change every system’s configurations, from list to most privileged layer. Since it is so fundamental in the network management process, it is also very powerful for attackers to use as an attack vector.

User Account Control (UAC) plays a crucial role in Windows security by mitigating the risk of malware. It accomplishes this by restricting the capacity of malicious code to run with administrator privileges. The CIS benchmark 2.3.17 for User Account Control (UAC) specifically addresses the security configuration settings related to UAC on Windows operating systems. We will discuss in this blog CIS benchmarks for.

In interactive login, users directly engage with the computer system through a user interface, commonly achieved by logging in via a graphical user interface (GUI) or a command line interface (CLI).

Windows Remote Desktop Service (RDS) is a component of Microsoft Windows that allows users to take control of a remote computer or a virtual machine that supports the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) via a network connection for RDP access. When enabling remote desktop access (RDP), it is crucial to implement strong passwords to thwart potential brute force attacks to ensure a secure remote desktop.

Optimally configuring “DisableIPSourceRouting” parameter enhances security by mitigating the risk of denial-of-service (DOS) attacks through packet spoofing. In such attacks, the goal is to inundate the target with high volumes of traffic, and using spoofed IP addresses makes it challenging to filter and identify the true source of the attack. Server hardening can be arduous. CSH by CalCom automates the process, learning your network to eliminate the need for testing.

Windows PowerShell is a powerful scripting language and a command-line executor developed by Microsoft to provide a better interface for system administrators to simplify managing and automating administrative tasks. PowerShell was launched in 2006 and has been a standard feature of the Windows operating system (OS) since Windows 7, enabling system administrators to simplify and automate administrative tasks while following essential security best practices.

Active Directory is most organizations’ primary identity storage, and is integral to an organization’s operating system. It is used to manage security principals, including user accounts, computers, servers, and other devices in the network. Since its launch 20 years ago, it has been integrated with numerous applications and systems and became one of the main foundations in the organization’s IT infrastructure.

The OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) protocol belongs to a category of IP Routing protocols and serves as an Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) designed for the Internet. It is employed to disseminate IP routing details across a solitary Autonomous System (AS) within an IP network.

While NetBIOS (Network Basic Input/Output System) has been historically used for local network communication, it has several security vulnerabilities and limitations, and its use has diminished over time. Here are some reasons why someone might want to disable NetBIOS: Broadcast Traffic: NetBIOS relies on broadcast traffic for name resolution, which can lead to network congestion and inefficiency, especially in larger networks.

User Account Control (UAC) serves as a security feature in Windows, aiming to safeguard the operating system from unauthorized modifications. Whenever alterations demand administrator-level permissions, UAC prompts the user, allowing them to either authorize or reject the requested change.

The Audit Kernel Object feature dictates whether the operating system records audit events when users try to access the system kernel, encompassing mutexes and semaphores. Security audit events are generated exclusively for kernel objects with a corresponding System Access Control List (SACL). Typically kernel objects are only given SACLs if the AuditBaseObjects or AuditBaseDirectories auditing options are enabled.

NetBT (NetBIOS over TCP/IP) is a protocol used to integrate NetBIOS services into the TCP/IP protocol suite and was originally designed for small local networks but needed adaptation to work in larger, modern TCP/IP-based networks. NetBT NodeType is a setting that determines how a device communicates with other devices on a network using the NetBIOS protocol.