From Paranoia to Compliance: The Bumpy Road of System Hardening Practices on Stack Exchange

Summary

Hardening computer systems against cyberattacks is crucial for security. However, past incidents illustrated that many system operators struggle with effective system hardening. Hence, many computer systems and applications remain vulnerable to security threats. To date, the research community lacks a comprehensive understanding of system operators’ motivations, practices, and challenges related to system hardening. With a focus on practices and challenges, we qualitatively analyzed 316 Stack Exchange (SE) posts related to system hardening. We find that access control and deployment-related issues are the most challenging, and system operators suffer from misconceptions and unrealistic expectations. Most frequently, posts focused on operating systems and server applications. System operators were driven by the fear of their systems getting attacked or by compliance reasons. Finally, we discuss our research questions, make recommendations for future system hardening, and illustrate the implications of our work.