This chapter is about understanding various aspects of patching and security hardening. You will understand the importance of patching, along with the practical techniques of enumerating patch levels on target systems, and you'll develop secure configuration guidelines for hardening the security of the infrastructure.

We will learn about the following topics in this chapter:

• Defining patching
• Patch enumeration on Windows and Linux
• Introduction to security hardening and secure configuration reviews
• Utilizing Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmarks for hardening