Security Benchmarks for Workstations, Servers and Applications

We've all had to lock down a workstation, server or application for security/audit purposes and wondered where to start.  I recently stumbled across the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmark program which provides vendor agnostic advice and tools on accessing and improving the security of servers and applications.   The CIS program can help public and private organisations to meet compliance standards for FISMA, PCI, HIPAA and a lot more.

Behind the scenes of CIS there is a group of IT security experts who give their time and knowledge to help provide the information and tools that can help to benefit the rest of the IT community.

The CIS provide a Java based assessment tool that you can run on your workstations or servers to assess the potential security holes within them.

Once you download the tool from their website and run it you are confronted by a list of current benchmark standards you can run against your device.  In this case I am running the tool against my Windows 10 workstation.

The next screen in the wizard is what profile you want to run against the device.  These are security profiles that you can choose from depending on what level of security you are looking to achieve. 

The next screen that you encounter is relating to how you would like the results reported to you.  You have several options to choose from, I've found the HTML report to be the most useful so far. 

Depending on what benchmarks and profiles you've asked to run the tool may take several minutes to generate. Once it has you will have a report that contains information on what your device has passed or failed on and what the implications of any failures are as well as some useful tips on how to resolve. 

For more information pop on over to the CIS website at https://www.cisecurity.org/

MS Ignite 2016

As I'm sure you are all aware MS Ignite this year was held in Atlanta in September for those of us not lucky enough to be there in person Microsoft have kindly put the session online via YouTube so we can view them.  With over 1000 sessions it can be a daunting task trying to figure out which ones to watch and which ones not to.  I've put together a list of six sessions I really enjoyed watching and think would be of benefit to you guys as well.

Session Name	Overview
BRK4010: Learn about Windows 10 Secure Kernel	Another informative session from Sami Laiho.
BRK2215: Debate the top 10 reasons not to move your Exchange on-premises mailboxes to Exchange Online	An informal dicussion with Messaging experts on the age old question, on-premises or cloud for Exchange.
BRK3218: Discover what's new and what's coming for Microsoft Outlook	A good look at what they are doing with end user feedback to develop Outlook into a more efficient product.
BRK2186: Introduce Windows Server 2016 into your environment	This is a good look at the new technologies that Windows Server 2016 has and how it can be used within your environment.
THR2141: Disrupt cyber-threats with revolutionary security in Windows 10	This is a quick overview of the security that is now built within Windows 10 to help mitigate against malware and hacking threats.
BRK4028: Case of the unexplained: Windows Troubleshooting with Mark Russinovich	Mark has had similar sessions at TechEd and Ignite in previous years and they are always very informative. He gives an insight into how the SysInternals tools can help to troubleshoot issues with malware, error messages, blue screens of death, and much more.

There is a nice PowerShell script available that can help you download the videos and slide decks to watch offline and store for future use over at the Technet Gallery:  https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Ignite-2016-Slidedeck-and-296df316