The goal of system hardening (or security hardening) is to reduce the attack surface. It includes reducing security risks and removing potential attack vectors. By removing superfluous programs, accounts functions, applications, ports permissions access etc., the reduced attack surface means the underlying system will be less vulnerable, making it harder for attackers or malware to gain a foothold within your IT ecosystem.
The following is an excerpt from Netskope’s recent book Designing a SASE Architecture for Dummies. This is the sixth in a series of seven posts detailing a set of incremental steps for implementing a well-functioning SASE architecture. Throughout this series, we repeat that the data center is just one more place people and data have to go—it’s no longer the center of attention.