The process of strengthening a system to reduce its vulnerability and [[Attack Surface]] Security hardening is conducted on: - Hardware - [[OS Hardening|Operating systems]] - Applications - [[Network Hardening|Computer networks]] - Databases - [[Cloud Hardening|Cloud resources]] ### Assessing vulnerabilities Before a [[Brute Force Attacks|brute force]] attack or other cybersecurity incident occurs, companies can run a series of tests on their network or web applications to assess vulnerabilities. Analysts can use [[Virtual Machines]] and [[Sandbox environments|sandboxes]] to test suspicious files, check for vulnerabilities before an event occurs, or to simulate a cybersecurity incident.