Hardening of UNIX Operating System

Operating system hardening is the process to address security weaknesses in the operation systems by implementing the latest operating system patches, hot fixes and updates as well as follow up the specific procedures and policies to reduce attacks and system down time. Hardening is a not a one time activity, it is a on going task to mitigate the risk to performing high quality of computing. We have to build-up the secure production server in such a way to remove the unwanted devices, fix up the miss configuration, not allow the default setting, enhancement the current configuration and develop the new system programming and applying new security patches before going to the production environment. Hardening of the operating system should be support to the high integrity, reliability, availability, privacy, scalability and confidentiality at the lowest level of risk to achieve the highest level of objective ( benefits) from the critical IT infrastructure of the organization. Safeguarding information and protecting the integrity of your network and systems are vital to our business. IT security professionals in many companies have established policies applicable to their entire organization, but it may be up to individual departments that manage the systems to implement security in accordance with these policies. Security professionals recognize the need for flexibility when it comes to implementation, due to the unique requirements of each department. Hardening of an operating system involves the removal of all non essential tools, utilities and other systems administration options, any of which could be used to ease a hacker's path to your systems. Following this, the hardening process will ensure that all appropriate security features are activated and configured correctly. Again, 'out of the box' systems will likely be set up for ease of access with access to administrator account. Some vendors have now recognized that a market exists for the OS-hardened systems. This thesis especially focuses on the hardening of UNIX sun solaris operating system.