System and Device Hardening

Centurion will determine how well the your organisations systems and devices align with industry standards and vendor security guidelines, and how well it can defend your organisations information during a penetration test. System and device hardening reviews are intended to uncover vulnerabilities in configuration, unnecessary network services, the use of insecure technologies, vulnerable software versions, and weaknesses in protecting your organisations information.

A comprehensive review of systems and devices will identify and expose vulnerabilities that are not always possible to discover through penetration tests and vulnerability assessments. At Centurion we apply our hacker mindset in everything we do, and when analysing the configuration of systems and devices we identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited through our approach applied during a network penetration test.

The use of poorly configured or insecure routing protocols enables an attacker to manipulate the flow of information within your organisations network, an important requirement for an attacker performing a man in the middle attack.

Accurate and complete logging information is vital to any incident responders or forensic analysts ability to uncover past events during an investigation. Centralised time synchronisation and logging configured in devices is one of the most beneficial steps an organisation can take towards successfully detecting a compromise before and after it occurs.

During a network penetration test we often find that credentials for networking devices are easily guessed through brute force attacks and there are no deterrents in place due to the lack of centralised authentication. When reviewing a network device or system we take this into consideration by reviewing the capabilities for authentication, authorisation, and accounting (auditing) to ensure that the system or device can adequately defend your organisations information.

Once a system has been compromised the typical next step is to exfiltrate information out of the organisations network. A security review of your organisations firewall rules will identify possible techniques for successful data breach and Centurion can help your organisation limit and greatly reduce the techniques available to the attacker.

An important aspect of reviewing the configuration of networking devices is to have a clear understanding of where the device is connected within the network architecture. This enables us to accurately assess the risk through providing the access vector component in the CVSS risk calculation and provide appropriate recommendations suitable for your organisations unique requirements.

Centurion acts with complete independence and with your best interests in mind. We do not recommend vendor specific solutions, products, or services, instead we help you to find cost efficient solutions to leverage your existing technology and IT assets.