Is It a Bastion Host? — TechKnowSurge

About this interactive

Castle towers were tall and hollow, and once gunpowder arrived, cannon fire brought them down. Forts answered with bastions: shorter, solid earthwork points sticking out from the walls, so an attacker met the bastion before the wall. A bastion host is that idea for a network. It is a server placed out front, the first thing someone from outside encounters, protecting the servers on the back end. It is hardened: stripped down, with very few services running, but heavily reinforced. It can do a front-end job as well, for example as a reverse proxy or a load balancer, so it both balances traffic and makes an attacker get through it first. To decide a card, check three things: is it out front, is it stripped down and hardened, and is it protecting something behind it?

What you'll learn

Decide whether a machine fits the bastion host role: hardened, stripped of services it does not need, and placed out front to protect the servers behind it
Recognize that a bastion host can also do another front-end job, such as reverse proxy or load balancer

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+

3.2 Given a scenario, apply security principles to secure enterprise infrastructure.

4.1 Given a scenario, apply common security techniques to computing resources.

Key terms

Bastion Host: A hardened server placed on the network perimeter that serves as a gateway to protect internal servers from external threats.
Hardening: The process of securing a system by reducing its attack surface — disabling unnecessary services, applying configuration best practices, removing default credentials, and keeping software patched. Hardened systems offer fewer opportunities for exploitation.
Reverse Proxy: A proxy server positioned in front of backend servers that intercepts client requests to provide load balancing, anonymity, or protection for those servers.
Load Balancer: A device or software that distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers to ensure availability and performance.

Topics

Interactive Streak Sort

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