Development of base machines for existing infrastructures with enhanced safety using international standards

Abstract

This project has sought to attack the issue of cibersecurity and offers a solution that allows increasing the base security of Linux and Windows machines while requiring the least possible manual intervention. To this end, recommendations from national and international standards, validated and widely used in the Cybersecurity field, have been followed. The ultimate goal is to deploy already secured base machines in an automated way, with the possibility of integrating them in existing infrastructures, as well as to provide organizations a way to increase the security of their machines by means of an unattended process, all while ensuring a certain level of quality provided by the followed standards. Despite having been born out of necessity and not being commissioned per se, the main stakeholders of this project, the School of Computing Engineering and the University of Oviedo, have seriously considered making use of what has been developed to increase the security of their computer equipment in future academic years. Likewise, the project will be used as support material for the “Administration of Web Servers” subject of the Master’s Degree in Web Engineering, starting next year.

La seguridad en la actualidad solo se puede implementar mediante una estrategia de defensa en profundidad. Si bien se hace mucho énfasis en la protección de redes y su aislamiento, muchas veces el estado de los endpoint (las máquinas dentro de esas redes) no es el deseado, puesto que se trata de instalaciones con sus valores por defecto, sin ningún tipo de tratamiento adicional en cuestiones de seguridad. Este proyecto usa estándares de seguridad internacionales, probados y validados para lograr crear de forma completamente automatizada máquinas base Linux y Windows con un elevado nivel de seguridad, que puedan servir como base para despliegues en infraestructuras como por ejemplo laboratorios de la Universidad.