Identifying the Security Settings on Your Operating System

You can use the ClearPath Forward Hardening Tools to audit your current operating system security settings. This may be useful when planning how you wish to configure your operating systems in support of specific application workloads.

Windows Operating Systems

To generate a report that compares the current security settings of your operating system (for example, a Windows Server 2012 operating system commissioned with Unisys-supplied blueprints) to the recommended settings for a hardening level recommended by Unisys (for example, level 1), do the following:

  1. If necessary, download and install the ClearPath Forward Hardening Tool for Windows on your target operating system.

    Note: The latest version of the hardening tools are available from the Unisys Product Support website: Locate the ClearPath Forward Product Support page, and then browse to the Software tab on the Drivers and Downloads page.

  2. Set your Windows PowerShell execution policy to RemoteSigned.

  3. Run the tool (a Windows PowerShell script named Apply-Hardening.ps1) with the –reportOnly option.

For detailed help and more information on the syntax, enter the following command at a Windows PowerShell prompt:

get-help C:\ProgramData\Unisys\Hardening\Apply-Hardening.ps1 -detailed

For more information on using the tool, see Using the ClearPath Forward Hardening Tool for Windows.

Linux Operating Systems

To audit the current state of the security settings of your operating system (for example, a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 operating system commissioned with Unisys-supplied blueprints), and generate a report describing areas that could be hardened to further improve security, do the following:

  1. If necessary, download and install the ClearPath Forward Hardening Tool for Linux on your target operating system.

    Note: The latest version of the hardening tools are available from the Unisys Product Support website: Locate the ClearPath Forward Product Support page, and then browse to the Software tab on the Drivers and Downloads page.

  2. Run the tool (available at /usr/bin/harden) with the –r parameter.

For more information on using the tool, see Using the ClearPath Forward Hardening Tool for Linux.

Note: As some recommendations may conflict with application needs, be sure to consider the requirements of applications on the partition before modifying any settings.