Understanding CIS Benchmarks

Before we delve into what a CIS Benchmark actually consists of, let's take a look at why they exist and, conceptually, what they are.

What is a CIS Benchmark?

Securing servers, regardless of their operating system, is a big task. It requires being constantly up to date with new attack vectors and vulnerabilities as they are discovered (see the mention of the DROWN attack and SSLv2 in the introduction to this chapter). Some things are well-known and considered normal. For example, on Linux, it is generally frowned upon to ever log in as root—instead, it is almost universally recognized that each individual user should have their own user account and should perform all commands requiring...