In the past, most attention in cybersecurity was paid to technologies that either block threats or help organizations recover from them. These are solutions like firewalls, antivirus, and EDRs, which help protect a network from harm.

However, this obsession with protection missed a fundamental truth. Security isn’t something you do to a network — it’s an emergent property of building a network environment securely from the ground-up.

If your network or assets aren’t set up securely, they will always be vulnerable — no matter how much you spend on security solutions. That’s where system hardening comes in.

What is System Hardening?

System hardening is the process of securing an asset — for example, a server, operating system, or application — by reducing its attack surface. That means configuring the asset in a way that cuts down the number of ways an attacker can gain access to it.

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