This tool looks sharp, but why do you say "HardeningKitty is a good start." It seems to be an all-in-one solution to harden your system, and not an introduction, like my guide.
Main problem is that targeted attacks are rife in the software industry. Even small startups get frequently targeted by competitors.
In order to defend against the targeted attacks you need to plug hundreds of holes in the Windows, some of these can be plugged by HardeningKitty but to truly secure it:
- You need to figure out which services you can disable without crashing the OS and keep them at a minimum. This entirely depends on how you use OS and which type of software is installed at the endpoints.
- Use stuff like Windows Application Guard, disable lolbas as much as possible (https://lolbas-project.github.io/).
- Secure the WSL itself.
- Windows opens ports according to it's own mind. Only way to unplug these open ports is to add another hardware firewall separate from the endpoint itself. So you can't even trust the inbuilt firewall of Windows.
- Windows is a very dynamic OS and each update can result in more open holes or might just automatically discard previously applied settings. Thus, you need to keep monitoring this 24/7.
- Windows registry has a very large amount of paths for malware persistence. This amount is far beyond malware persistence paths on Linux. Unfortunately, Windows Defender doesn't care much about this, so you need to monitor this yourself.
And this is just the beginning, even if you plug all this stuff, you might get attacked by zero days. Monitoring all that will also require SIEM solutions on top of it. Most of the SIEM solutions are just focused on compliance. Building a SIEM solution for real security instead of compliance is also a very hard task.
Indeed, I was not thinking about that level of attacks. However, if individuals and organizations do not understand the minimum required to secure their instances, they can't stand a chance against advanced threat actors and skilled adversaries.
Thanks for your detailed explanations.