About hardening

Hardening is the process of enhancing hardware and software security. When hardening a system, basic and advanced security measures are put in place to achieve a more secure operating environment.

The Security Center default settings offer a balance between system security, usability, and performance. By hardening your system, you are optimizing it for more security, but potentially at the expense of some usability or performance. Hardening is an incremental process. How much you harden your security system depends on your threat model and the sensitivity of your information.

The Security Center Hardening Guide outlines our recommended procedures to improve your system security.

We define two levels of security in this guide:

Basic level:
Security measures for systems that require minimal security.
Advanced level:
Security measures that provide higher security, but are more complex, or take longer to implement. Organizations with strict security policies should adhere to this level.

To help you improve your system security and identify areas of concern, the Security score widget rates your adherence to the Security Center Hardening Guide.