Operating System Security

Reduce potential risk of security breaches in the operating environment by performing the following, often termed “system hardening:”

• Minimize the size of the operating environment installation. When installing a Sun server in an environment that is exposed to the Internet, or any untrusted network, reduce the Solaris software installation to the minimum number of packages necessary to support the applications to be hosted. Achieving minimization in services, libraries, and applications helps increase security by reducing the number of subsystems that must be maintained.

  The Solaris Security Toolkit provides a flexible and extensible mechanism to minimize, harden, and secure Solaris systems. The primary goal behind the development of this toolkit is to simplify and automate the process of securing Solaris systems. For more information see:

  http://wwws.sun.com/software/security/jass

• Track and monitor file system changes. Within systems that require inclusion of security, a file change control and audit tool is indispensable as it tracks changes in files and detects possible intrusion. You can use a product such as Tripwire for Servers, or Solaris Fingerprint Database (available from SunSolve Online).