System images are a critical part of cloud computing and desktop virtualization. They are essentially a snapshot of an operating system’s state, including all installed software, system settings, and configurations. These images are then used to create virtual machines (VMs) that can be quickly deployed, ensuring consistency across multiple instances.
System images are crucial to IT for several reasons, including:
- Scalability: Operations can easily be scaled up and down, spinning up new VMs from the same image and ensuring all instances are identical and adhere to the same standards.
- Disaster recovery (DR): They can be instrumental in enabling rapid restoration of systems, reducing downtime and mitigating data loss.
- Security and compliance: Pre-configured images can be designed to meet specific security and compliance requirements, fortifying instances from the moment they are deployed.
While standard images are widely used for their simplicity and ease of use, hardened images integrate advanced security measures to take system images a step further. As a result, hardened images are becoming an increasingly important component of a modern security strategy.
Understanding standard images
Providing a pre-configured view of an operating system and its applications and standard system images are ready to be deployed to multiple virtual machines. They are commonly used to:
- Quickly provision new VMs, ensuring that all new instances are consistent with a predefined setup.
- Create uniform environments that mirror production setups, facilitating efficient development and bug tracking for developers and testers.
- Simplify IT infrastructure maintenance and scaling, enabling seamless updates and patches across multiple instances.
Despite their widespread use, standard images often come with default security settings that may not be sufficient to protect against advanced threats. They lack the fine-tuned security measures needed for environments where data protection is critical or subject to stringent regulatory compliance standards, such as HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and CMMC.
Without additional hardening, standard images can leave systems vulnerable to a wide range of cyber threats, including malware, unauthorized access, and data breaches.
The anatomy of hardened images
Hardened images are meticulously crafted, tailored to meet the highest security standards and compliance requirements. Here’s a closer look at how they differ from standard images:
- Minimized attack surface: By stripping away any non-essential services and applications, hardened images ensure that only the necessary components are active, reducing the potential entry points for cyber threats.
- Tightened system configurations: Applying more stringent security, hardened images strengthen settings and policies, including disabling default accounts and passwords, setting strong password policies, and configuring firewalls and security groups.
- Advanced security features: Pre-configured with advanced security controls designed to protect against a wide array of threats, hardened images’ controls are typically based on industry best practices and include antivirus and anti-malware tools, intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS), and data encryption.
- Resilient against emerging threats: The latest security patches and fixes ensure hardened images remain resilient against new and emerging threats. This ongoing maintenance is often automated to minimize the risk of human error.
- Strict regulatory compliance: Built to comply with specific regulatory standards and frameworks, such as CIS Benchmarks™, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and CMMC, organizations can quickly deploy hardened images, knowing they meet or exceed the required security standards.
By transforming standard images into hardened ones, organizations can significantly enhance their security posture with robust systems capable of withstanding sophisticated cyber attacks, providing peace of mind for IT administrators and compliance officers.
Side-by-side comparison
To fully understand the value of hardened images, compare them side by side with standard images. This analysis will highlight the distinctions in terms of security posture, attack surface, maintenance, and performance implications.
Using CIS Hardened Images with Nerdio
Nerdio has collaborated with the Center for Internet Security (CIS) to provide out-of-the-box, pre-hardened images that adhere to the highest security benchmarks, simplifying compliance with stringent regulatory requirements. Based on its partnership with Nerdio, CIS has released its first Windows 10/11 multisession images on the Azure Marketplace. These images are specifically configured to streamline and secure AVD deployments.
Nerdio’s customers are now able to select a CIS Hardened Image® directly within the platform when deploying Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) machines. Organizations seeking to prioritize security and compliance can also select CIS Hardened Images in the Nerdio Cost Estimator and build it into their price quotes.
By leveraging Nerdio and CIS resources, businesses can swiftly and effectively upgrade their virtual environments, achieving enhanced security and compliance with ease.
