Understanding Windows Hardening Severity Levels

Hi there! It's great to hear you're finding HardeningKitty valuable for your Windows hardening efforts. Let's dive into the details of the Severity field in our input CSV files and clarify how it works.

The Role of the Severity Field in HardeningKitty

The Severity field in the input CSV files for HardeningKitty is a crucial component that helps categorize the impact and urgency of a particular hardening recommendation. When you're looking at security benchmarks like CIS or STIG, they often assign different levels of importance to various settings. HardeningKitty leverages this to provide a structured way to assess and prioritize your security configurations. Understanding how this field is defined and used is key to effectively aligning your custom rules and reports with the project's overall security model. It allows you to quickly grasp which vulnerabilities or misconfigurations pose the most significant risk and therefore require immediate attention. This prioritization is not just a theoretical exercise; it directly impacts your security posture by ensuring that your resources are focused on the most critical areas first. Without a clear severity classification, teams might spend valuable time on less impactful issues, leaving critical vulnerabilities exposed for longer than necessary. Therefore, the Severity field acts as a compass, guiding your hardening strategy and resource allocation. It’s designed to be interpretable and actionable, providing a clear hierarchy of risk that security teams can use to drive their remediation efforts.

Is the Severity Manually Defined or Automatically Calculated?

Let's get straight to your first question: Is the Severity value manually defined in the CSV, or is it automatically calculated by HardeningKitty? The answer is that the Severity field is intended to be manually defined within the input CSV files. HardeningKitty itself does not automatically calculate the severity of a rule. Instead, it relies on the information you provide in the CSV to understand the relative importance of each hardening recommendation. This manual approach gives you, the user, the ultimate control over how each specific rule is classified. You have the expertise regarding your particular environment and risk tolerance, making your input invaluable in assigning an appropriate severity. This direct control ensures that the severity levels reflect your organization's specific security priorities and risk appetite. While benchmarks provide a general guideline, your operational context might necessitate adjustments. For instance, a setting deemed 'Medium' by a benchmark might be considered 'High' in your highly regulated environment due to compliance requirements or the sensitive nature of the data processed. By setting it manually, you can tailor the hardening process to your unique needs, ensuring that the prioritization is meaningful and effective for your security team. It’s a collaborative effort where the benchmark provides the foundation, and your input refines it for practical application. This manual definition is a core design principle, empowering users to customize the tool to their specific operational realities and security objectives, making the hardening process more relevant and impactful.

Recommended Sources and Guidelines for Setting Severity

Given that the Severity value is manually defined, you're likely wondering about the recommended source or guideline for setting it. The primary source and guideline for determining the severity level should indeed be derived from established security benchmarks and standards, such as the CIS (Center for Internet Security) Benchmarks and STIGs (Security Technical Implementation Guides). These resources are meticulously developed by security experts and are widely recognized as authoritative guides for securing operating systems and applications. They often categorize their recommendations based on the potential impact of a vulnerability or misconfiguration. For instance, a setting that, if exploited, could lead to remote code execution and complete system compromise would typically be classified with a higher severity than a setting that only impacts the confidentiality of non-sensitive information. When defining the severity in your CSV, we recommend consulting the specific CIS Benchmark or STIG document relevant to the Windows version and component you are hardening. Look for any associated 'severity' or 'impact' ratings provided within those documents. If a benchmark explicitly assigns a severity (e.g., 'High', 'Medium', 'Low', or a numerical score), that's your most direct and reliable indicator. In the absence of an explicit rating, you'll need to exercise judgment based on the potential risk. Consider factors like: the ease of exploitation, the potential impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA triad), and whether the vulnerability could lead to a full system compromise or data breach. Our project uses an internal classification that is heavily influenced by these external benchmarks, aiming to provide a consistent and understandable severity scale. However, the ultimate decision rests with you to map the benchmark's guidance to our defined categories. This ensures that the severity levels in your reports are not only informed by best practices but also relevant to your organization's specific threat landscape and risk tolerance. It’s about translating authoritative guidance into actionable priorities for your environment.

Severity Mapping from CIS/STIG Benchmarks

To further clarify the connection between external benchmarks and our internal Severity field, you asked: Does the severity level come directly from CIS / STIG benchmarks, or is it an internal/custom classification used by the project? And if it is mapped or derived, is there a documented mapping (for example: CIS level → severity)? This is an excellent question that gets to the heart of how we ensure consistency and usability. The severity level is indeed primarily derived from CIS and STIG benchmarks, but it is then mapped to an internal classification system used by HardeningKitty. This approach allows us to standardize severity across different benchmarks and provide a consistent reporting format. While CIS and STIG documents provide valuable insights into the criticality of their recommendations, they don't always use a uniform