CIS recently released CIS Hardened Images for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 into the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online
store providing applications and services for use on Microsoft Azure. CIS
Hardened Images are virtual machines preconfigured according to the security
recommendations of the CIS Benchmarks. In the past year, CIS has released a
total of 18 CIS Hardened Images for various operating systems into the Azure
Marketplace and the Azure Government Marketplace.
Hardening is the process of limiting potential vulnerabilities that can be
exploited by hackers and cyber criminals. The CIS Benchmarks are a set of
consensus-based recommendations developed by cybersecurity experts around the
world to improve cybersecurity defenses for various technologies. While
operating systems can have hundreds of vulnerabilities by default, CIS Hardened
Images are preconfigured to strengthen security, reduce system build costs, and
help accelerate workload deployment time.
CIS Hardened Images in Azure are configured with the majority of the
relevant CIS Benchmark recommendations. Each CIS Hardened Image includes
CIS-CAT Pro assessment reports and exception reports against the applicable CIS
Benchmarks.
"A default instance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 can have over 220
configuration settings that are recommended to be reconfigured according to the
related CIS Benchmark. Hardening an image manually can be a tedious process,
especially across multiple virtual machine environments," said Brig. Gen.
USAF (Retired) Steve Spano, CIS President and COO. "To save time without
compromising cybersecurity, Azure users should consider spinning up a CIS
Hardened Image. In fact, frequent Azure users should start with the CIS Azure
Foundations Benchmark, which helps an organization build a set of security
policies and processes to protect data and assets in Azure."
"Through Microsoft Azure Marketplace, customers around the world can
easily find, buy, and deploy partner solutions they can trust, all certified
and optimized to run on Azure," said Sajan Parihar, Director, Microsoft
Azure Platform at Microsoft Corp. "We're happy to welcome CIS Hardened
Images for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to the growing Azure Marketplace
ecosystem."
The Azure Marketplace is an online market for
buying and selling finished Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications and
premium datasets. The Azure Marketplace helps connect companies seeking
innovative, cloud-based solutions with partners who have developed solutions
that are ready to use.