Microsoft’s Baseline Security and Window’s Web Server Security
The assignment is to write a 2- to 4-page paper that explains basic Web security including how to properly configure Microsoft’s Baseline Security and how to secure Window’s Web Server.
Microsoft’s Baseline Security and Window’s Web Server Security
Microsoft baseline and windows web server are prone to threats and risks related to cybercrime and thus there is need to adopt the best practices and approaches to secure them. The web is prone to risks and vulnerabilities such as flaws injection cross-site Request forgery, security misconfigurations, insecure direct object references, and failure to restrict URL access. Web security needs is a vital aspect of information security that ensures the safety and protection of web services, web applications and websites. In this regard, protection and security measures need to be adopted through protocols to ensure sites are not accessed by unauthorized parties. There is a need to secure the window’s Web Server and configure Microsoft’s Baseline Security to ensure web security and data, applications, website, and virtual operations are safe and secure from malicious parties.
Basic Web security
Web security takes the protection of web applications through detection, prevention, and responding to security risks and threats. Web applications and websites are prone to security risks, breaches and threats make the owners or holders vulnerable. The attacks occur in the form of code injection, SQL injection, remote file inclusion, cross-site scripting, data breach, and password breach (Bugliesi, Calzavara, and Focardi, 2017). The hacking or entry of web applications or websites by unauthorized parties, and thus, there is a need to adopt protection protocols, standards, and measures. Consequently, organizations protect their websites or web apps by adopting different steps, such as using updated encryption, patching vulnerabilities, sufficient authentication, and preventing the loss of data by using secure software development practices. Additionally, there are defense strategies adopted to ensure the web application and website are protected, such as web scanning to seek unknown threats and resource assignment to alert the developer or the owner of security and threat issues.
Securing Window’s Web Server
The web server is tasked with hosting web applications and websites, thus making it prone to attacks and vulnerabilities. In this regard, the best practices, approaches, and measures need to be adopted in safeguarding the webservers from attacks. First, one needs to disable unnecessary services and applications, thus reducing the possibility of potential attacks. The disabling of some features ensure avenues that can be used by attackers to implement attacks are effectively reduced. For instance, the FTP server can be disabled when not in use (Boyce, Shapiro, and Tidrow, 2014). Consequently, the window firewall needs to be installed and activated to prevents attacks on the server. The firewall is effective in the prevention of attacks as it ensures that the server can only accept and act on valid packets. This approach turns away attackers as they try to implement malicious activities. Furthermore, the webserver can be secured by putting a restriction on the IP address. The IP address restriction enables the user to regulate IP addresses and domains that access the webserver. Defining the IP address or range that will have access to the webserver enhances the safety since addresses and domains from malicious sources are blocked. Moreover, server security and protection can be effected through the feature of request filtering. In this regard, the user or owner of the webserver can give access to an internal domain or other parties of interest while blocking other parties. More so, the URL authorization feature effectively protects the webserver. The feature ensures rules for specific requests are applied when dealing with certain URLs. The URL authorization selects the users to access the webserver. The authorized users access the webserver through the authentication process for the users. Additionally, the webserver can be secured through the security configuration of the wizard. This feature ensures that the window server securely configured.
Configuring Microsoft’s Baseline Security
The Microsoft baseline presents a group of configuration settings that details the security impact, and thus they must be effectively configured to achieve the desired security on the system or data. The configuration of Microsoft baseline security is effectively achieved through security configuration management (Martinez, Daalmans, and Bennett, 2014). The configurations are established with the interest of adopting a disciplined approach to achieve the relevant security. Regular changes need to be adopted to ensure that the system is updated in line with the changing organizational functions, security needs, and changes in services offered.
Changes have adverse impacts on the already established security posture, and thus configuration operations need to be handled with care for the maintenances and establishment of the information system. The configuration management needs to be security-focused to achieve a secure state under normal operations, reconstitution of normal operations, and recovery or operations (Martinez, Daalmans and Bennett, 2014). Consequently, configuration management takes control of secure configurations to achieve high levels of security and enhance the management of risks that arise in the course of operations. Management of configurations is based on the processes and general concepts and activities directed towards giving attention to maintenances and implementation of the set security requirements of information and organization systems. Therefore, the configuration management ensures that Microsoft’s baseline meets all the security requirements and processes.
Conclusion
The webservers and applications are vital aspects of the organizational system, and; thus, they are prone to attacks and threats that need to be thwarted through proper security configurations and securing the windows web server. The web servers and web applications need to be protected and secured through the detection of threats and eliminating them, prevention of risks, and handling risky events.
References
Boyce, J., Shapiro, J. R., & Tidrow, R. (2014). Windows 8.1 Bible. John Wiley & Sons.
Bugliesi, M., Calzavara, S., & Focardi, R. (2017). Formal methods for web security. Journal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming, 87, 110-126.
Martinez, S., Daalmans, P., & Bennett, B. (2014). Mastering System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager. John Wiley & Sons.
