First Steps to Harden Your Organization’s Environment

Yuval Eitani

Introduction

In today’s threat landscape, small oversights can lead to massive breaches. Whether you’re a growing startup or a large enterprise, hardening your environment is one of the most effective ways to reduce your attack surface and strengthen your overall security posture.

Hardening means securing systems by minimizing vulnerabilities, disabling unnecessary features, and enforcing strong controls. This guide outlines the first, most important steps any organization should take to protect itself.

1. Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

MFA is a simple but powerful way to prevent unauthorized access—even if passwords are stolen. By requiring an additional verification step (like a mobile app or hardware token), you drastically reduce the chances of successful account takeovers.

Start with:

Email accounts
VPN access
Admin portals and cloud services (e.g., Microsoft 365, Google Workspace)

2. Change Default Credentials and Disable Unused Accounts

Default usernames and passwords are low-hanging fruit for attackers. Similarly, old or unused accounts can be exploited without detection.

Action items:

Change all default passwords (routers, firewalls, printers, etc.)
Audit and remove inactive or unnecessary accounts
Use unique, complex passwords for all systems

3. Patch and Update Systems Regularly

Unpatched software is one of the top entry points for attackers. Applying security updates closes known vulnerabilities and keeps your environment resilient.

Focus on:

Operating systems
Third-party applications (e.g., Adobe, browsers)
Network equipment firmware

4. Limit Administrative Privileges

Not everyone needs admin rights. Limiting these permissions prevents malware or insider threats from gaining full control of systems.

Best practices:

Apply the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP)
Use dedicated admin accounts—don’t use them for daily work
Monitor privileged account usage

5. Disable Unused Services and Ports

Every open service or port is a potential entry point. If you don’t use it—disable it.

Where to look:

Remote desktop services (e.g., RDP)
FTP, Telnet, SMB if not required
Management interfaces exposed to the internet

6. Set Up Backups — And Test Them

Backups are your last line of defense. But they’re useless if they’re outdated or untested.

Recommendations:

Perform regular backups of critical data
Store backups offline or in a separate cloud environment
Simulate recovery at least quarterly

7. Monitor and Log Activity

You can’t protect what you can’t see. Logging and monitoring give you visibility into what’s happening across your environment.