Intended Audience: Entry-level cybersecurity professionals, IT administrators, and anyone responsible for securing or developing systems.

Establishing a hardened baseline configuration is a foundational step in reducing risk and improving the security posture of an organization. But once you’ve built your gold image, how do you know it’s secure enough—and how do you ensure consistent settings across every system?

That’s where configuration benchmarks come in.

Why Use Industry Benchmarks?

Security configuration benchmarks offer structured guidance for hardening systems and minimizing attack surfaces. These standards are developed by experts across government, industry, and academia and are widely adopted for securing operating systems, applications, and network infrastructure.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, system administrators can leverage these benchmarks as blueprints to:

• Harden settings across workstations, servers, infrastructure devices, mobile devices, and cloud environments

• Ensure consistency across environments

• Meet regulatory or compliance requirements

• Align with cybersecurity frameworks like NIST or CIS Controls

Trusted Sources for Benchmarks

Two of the most widely used sources for configuration benchmarks are:

• CIS Benchmarks: Developed by the Center for Internet Security (CIS), these benchmarks offer consensus-based guidance for dozens of operating systems, applications, and cloud platforms. They are freely available and commonly used across the public and private sectors.

• DISA STIGs: The Defense Information Systems Agency’s Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs) are mandatory for U.S. Department of Defense systems, but they’re also used by civilian agencies and contractors. STIGs are detailed and often include stricter controls than CIS Benchmarks.

These resources serve as a baseline for system hardening, whether you're building out a new gold disk image or conducting a configuration audit.

Applying Configuration Benchmarks Effectively

Applying a benchmark to a real-world system takes more than just downloading a checklist. Here are some key steps to help ensure success:

1. Review and Tailor the Baseline

Start by reviewing the benchmark and identifying what makes sense for your environment. Not all recommendations may be feasible, especially if you have legacy systems or applications with unique dependencies. This is where risk-based decision making comes into play.

The goal isn’t to break things in the name of security. Instead, strike a balance between strong security controls and operational functionality.

2. Document Exceptions

For any setting that cannot be implemented as recommended, document the exception and include the justification. This is particularly important for audit or compliance purposes. Create a record of:

• What the deviation is

• Why it was necessary

• What compensating controls are in place

3. Test Before Deployment

Always test your baseline configuration in a lab or staging environment before pushing changes across production systems. Configuration changes can sometimes cause unexpected issues—especially if a benchmark setting disables a needed service or blocks communication.

Use a test environment to validate compatibility and performance before rollout.

4. Automate Where Possible

Automation tools like Microsoft Group Policy, Ansible, or other configuration management platforms can help enforce benchmark settings at scale. Automating the deployment of hardening baselines ensures consistency, saves time, and reduces the chance of human error.

CIS even provides prebuilt configuration scripts and Group Policy Object (GPO) templates for some benchmarks to simplify deployment.

5. Scan and Validate

Once the configurations are applied, use tools to scan and validate your systems. This ensures your hardening efforts are effective and no drift has occurred over time.

Some popular tools for scanning include:

• CIS-CAT Pro: A tool provided by CIS for assessing conformance to CIS Benchmarks

• SCAP-based tools: Many STIGs are available in SCAP format for automated compliance checks

Make validation part of your routine audits or vulnerability management processes.

Hardening in the Cloud

System hardening doesn’t just apply to traditional on-premises environments. As more organizations move workloads to the cloud, applying security benchmarks in cloud platforms is just as important, if not more so, due to the shared responsibility model.

To simplify this process, CIS offers pre-hardened virtual machine images in the major cloud marketplaces:

• AWS Marketplace

• Microsoft Azure Marketplace

• Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Marketplace

• Oracle Cloud Marketplace

These CIS Hardened Images are preconfigured based on CIS Benchmarks and provide a secure starting point for launching virtual machines in the cloud. Instead of starting from a vanilla image and hardening it yourself, you can launch a hardened baseline that has already been reviewed and tested against security best practices.

Why Use CIS Hardened Images?

• Save Time: Images come preconfigured with benchmark recommendations already applied, reducing setup and hardening time.

• Ensure Consistency: You start with a known-good configuration every time, reducing risk and avoiding configuration drift.

• Meet Compliance Requirements: CIS Hardened Images are designed to help organizations meet common compliance frameworks such as:

  • HIPAA

  • PCI DSS

  • FedRAMP

  • ISO/IEC 27001

  • NIST Cybersecurity Framework

Cloud providers offer both pay-as-you-go and bring-your-own-license (BYOL) options for CIS images, making them accessible for organizations of all sizes.

Pro tip: If you're using infrastructure-as-code (IaC) like Terraform, you can specify a hardened image ID in your deployments to automatically launch secure, compliant environments from the start.

Bottom Line

Establishing secure configuration baselines is foundational to protecting your systems, whether on-premises or in the cloud. Industry-recognized benchmarks like the CIS Benchmarks and DISA STIGs provide trusted, actionable guidance for hardening devices across your environment. While it takes careful testing and documentation to apply these securely and without breaking legacy systems, the investment pays off in improved security and easier compliance. In cloud environments, CIS Hardened Images offer a convenient, pre-secured starting point that helps organizations meet frameworks like HIPAA, PCI DSS, and NIST with minimal effort. Whether you're deploying laptops, servers, or cloud workloads, a hardened configuration baseline is one of the most effective defenses against cyber threats.

Learn More About Defense in Depth and Earn a Continuing Education Certificate

For a deeper dive into these concepts, watch my no-cost training video, Introduction to Configuration Management and System Hardening, available on YouTube or through Natsar’s website. By completing this training, you can earn Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits and strengthen your cybersecurity skills.

How Natsar Can Help

Natsar provides expert guidance on implementing secure system configurations, conducting configuration compliance assessments, and aligning with industry frameworks like NIST and CIS. Our consulting services and on-demand training help your organization reduce cyber risk and strengthen operational resilience. Learn more at natsar.com.

Stay Tuned for Our Next Post

In our next post, we’ll move beyond desktops and laptops to explore how configuration management applies to infrastructure devices like routers, switches, and firewalls. You’ll learn how to apply hardened benchmarks from CIS and DISA to network hardware, how to securely deploy configurations at scale, and how to preserve and manage device settings for long-term consistency. Whether you're managing a small office or an enterprise network, securing your infrastructure is a critical next step in your configuration management strategy.

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