Internet and Web Application Security, 3rd Edition

Hardening

When you harden a computer system, you are adding extra security measures to increase the capabilities of the system to withstand attacks. Hardening reduces the risk of attack by mitigating or at least covering vulnerabilities, which shrinks the system’s attack surface, which is the portion of a system vulnerable to attacks. In effect, hardening attempts to remove potential entry points that an attack could exploit.

Exposures

The attack surface of any computer or network, and anything else for that matter, is the combined flaws, misconfigurations, and errors that provide targets that an attacker could exploit. The attack surface can include a wide variety of vulnerabilities, which are created by misconfiguration or omission when a ...