ansible-collection-hardening VS How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Server

An ansible collection for hardening Linux systems I mostly wrote: https://github.com/dev-sec/ansible-collection-hardening

Another ansible collection to manage Icinga: https://github.com/T-Systems-MMS/ansible-collection-icinga-d...

And the yunohost app for invoice ninja: https://github.com/YunoHost-Apps/invoiceninja5_ynh

i have some packer builds where itll install ansible, run playbooks locally, then uninstall ansible. such as the the devsec os hardening role: https://github.com/dev-sec/ansible-collection-hardening

This collection is also interesting https://github.com/dev-sec/ansible-collection-hardening/

Second you want to ensure the os is secure and up to date. Take a look at os hardening best practices, for example this ansible playbook for linux: https://github.com/dev-sec/ansible-collection-hardening

To ensure SSH and other security related things are configured correctly, you can take a look at DevSec which helps you to apply proven security configuration principles. Also there is guides like "Secure Secure Shell" which can help you to better understand what you can do to increase the security of your servers (this one is from 2015 but many aspects are still relevant).

I learned a lot by using and reading through the source code of these ansible roles: https://github.com/dev-sec/ansible-collection-hardening

Have a look at https://github.com/dev-sec/ansible-collection-hardening

You can do much more https://github.com/dev-sec/ansible-collection-hardening/tree/master/roles/ssh_hardening

- own server costs about $5/month. I recommend using docker to deploy hbbr and hbbs. Back up the key in case you need to re-deploy. You do need to secure your Linux server, and this community-driven Github guide has some good tips to get started.

I have been using the How To Secure A Linux Server guide for quite a while and wanted to learn Ansible, so I created two playbooks to automate most of the guides content. The playbooks are still a work in progress.

If it works, I will then follow the hardening guide I did before (https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Server) and test after every step

Maybe these two repos can help you, I've used them both from time to time to look up stuff I have no idea about as a frontend main: https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Server https://github.com/decalage2/awesome-security-hardening

> In short it’s all about control, privacy, and security, in that order.

I am going to strongly urge you to consider changing that order and move *security* to the first priority. I have long run my own servers, it is much easier to setup a server with strong security foundation, than to clean up afterwards.

As a beginner, you should stick to a well known and documented Linux server distribution such as Ubuntu Server LTS or Fedora. Only install the programs you need. Do not install a windowing system on it. Do everything for the server from the command line.

Here are a few blog posts I have bookmarked over the years that I think are geared to beginners:

"My First 5 Minutes On A Server; Or, Essential Security for Linux Servers": An quick walk through of how to do basic server security manually [1]. There was a good Hacker News discussion about this article, most of the response suggests using tools to automate these types of security tasks [2], however the short tutorial will teach you a great deal, and automation mostly only makes sense when you are deploying a number of similar servers. I definitely take a more manual hands-on approach to managing my personal servers compared to the ones I professionally deploy.

"How To Secure A Linux Server": An evolving how-to guide for securing a Linux server that, hopefully, also teaches you a little about security and why it matters. [3]

Both Linode[4] and Digital Ocean[5] have created good sets of Tutorials and documentation that are generally trustworthy and kept up-to-date

Good luck and have fun

[1]: https://sollove.com/2013/03/03/my-first-5-minutes-on-a-serve...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5316093

[3]: https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Serve...

[4]: https://www.linode.com/docs/guides/

[5]: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials

I suggest these resources: - Some fundamentals: https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-security.html - One of the best imho ( exhaustive list ): https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Server - Ansible playbook to harden security by Jeff Geerling: https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-role-security - OAWSP Check list ( targeted for web apps... and honestly a bit overkill ): https://github.com/0xRadi/OWASP-Web-Checklist