I don’t care for FUD, I do however support due care and diligence to address an organization’s service and reputational risks.
A small federal agency’s website has been defaced tonight, allegedly by Iranian Threat Actors though the attack has not been validated to have originated from Iran.
Regardless of the source, this should serve as an advisory to harden public facing servers and web applications.
Hardening is the management of configuration, access control, network settings and server environment, including applications, in order to improve the overall security of an organization’s IT infrastructure and mitigation of inherent risk to the organization.
Nine basic hardening actions to consider include:
Ensure default credentials are removed and use a unique, complex password
Activate Multi-Factor Authentication
Validate configurations against vendor and industry standards
Remove or disable unnecessary services, especially remote access
Scan for vulnerabilities and push security updates
Deploy firewalls to create a DMZ from internal systems
Monitor logs for intrusions
Create and protect data backups
Implement load balancers and Denial of Service Protection
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