Securing Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Course details

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a popular Linux distribution for running servers and server infrastructure. And, keeping your RHEL hosts secure is a critical part of deploying and maintaining them. In this course, instructor Scott Simpson shows you how to build a practical, defense-in-depth security posture for RHEL using the tools and frameworks that sysadmins and security engineers rely on in production. Learn how to manage SELinux policies, configure the firewall to control host-level network traffic, and apply CIS Benchmark and DISA STIG hardening guidance to meet compliance requirements. You'll also find out how to enable and tune audit logging to capture events, harden SSH to eliminate common remote-access risks, and establish a reliable patching workflow to stay ahead of emerging vulnerabilities. This course is an ideal fit for anyone preparing for a compliance audit, locking down a production server, or simply leveling up their Linux security skills.

Concepts

Introduction

Welcome to the course
Hardening systems for compliance and threat reduction
Introducing CIS Benchmarks and DISA STIGs
Setting up your practice environment

Filesystem and Hardware Security

Partition layout and mount options
Setting a bootloader password
Protecting data with disk encryption
Surveying file permissions and discretionary controls
Establishing file integrity monitoring with AIDE
Restricting USB device access

Mandatory Access Controls and SELinux

Mandatory access control overview
Understanding SELinux modes, policies, and contexts
Managing SELinux booleans
Troubleshooting denials with audit2why and audit2allow

PAM and Privilege

Understanding Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM)
Exploring PAM configuration
Configuring PAM with authselect
Enforcing password quality
Using sudo

SSH Security

Hardening SSH
Configuring authentication controls
Hardening other features of SSH
Applying system-wide crypto policies
Controlling access

Firewall

Understanding firewalld and firewall-cmd
Managing zones and interfaces
Defining and applying services
Writing rich rules for complex scenarios
Persisting and auditing the firewall configuration

Patch Management

Planning patching cadence and coverage
Understanding DNF and subscription management basics
Applying security-only updates and CVE-targeted patches
Exploring automatic patching, kernel updates, and reboots

Audit Logging

Understanding auditd
Writing audit rules for files and syscalls
Querying logs with ausearch and aureport
Configuring log retention and rotation

Auditing and Remediating Systems

Exploring OpenSCAP and scap-security-guide
Running a compliance scan and reading the results
Performing manual remediation
Performing automated remediation
Making exceptions and customizing profiles

Conclusion

Next steps