Attack Surface Checklist for VMware Environments

Conduct an inventory of all assets and services including software, networks, database, cloud and SaaS services, web applications, and sensitive data that need to be protected. 

Create a list of all physical assets including servers, laptops, and other types of terminals or access points.

Clearly define roles and responsibilities for cybersecurity within your organization. Determine who will be responsible for overseeing the security of each asset, including system administrators, network administrators, data owners, and application owners.

Develop comprehensive cybersecurity policies and procedures that outline the security measures, guidelines, and best practices to be followed. These policies should clearly define the ownership and responsibilities of various stakeholders.

Assign responsibility for monitoring the security of your digital assets and promptly addressing any detected issues.

If you rely on third-party vendors or partners for certain aspects of your cybersecurity, clearly define ownership and responsibilities in your contractual agreements.

Clearly define roles and responsibilities for cybersecurity within your organization. Determine who will be responsible for overseeing the security of each asset, including system administrators, network administrators, data owners, and application owners.

Develop comprehensive cybersecurity policies and procedures that outline the security measures, guidelines, and best practices to be followed. These policies should clearly define the ownership and responsibilities of various stakeholders.

Assign responsibility for monitoring the security of your digital assets and promptly addressing any detected issues.

If you rely on third-party vendors or partners for certain aspects of your cybersecurity, clearly define ownership and responsibilities in your contractual agreements.

Establish and document a risk-management framework based on levels of criticality and impact on your infrastructure.

Check your environment frequently to evaluate whether you are protected or not from the latest known vulnerabilities and misconfigurations and whether or not they have exploits or were exploited in the wild: CVE, CISA KEV Catalog, Exploit-db, VMware best practices

Prioritize issues based on the level of risk and categorize them based on their severity levels and Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEVs) from sites such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Conduct regular vulnerability assessments and penetration tests on your VMware infrastructure to identify weaknesses and security gaps.

Analyze the configuration of your assets over time to detect drift or misconfigurations.

Monitor and log all activity on assets and services to identify potential threats.

Stay informed about relevant cybersecurity regulations that may impact your organization. 

Establish and document a compliance-management framework based on levels of criticality and impact on your infrastructure.

Conduct continuous assessments for VMware guidelines, internal policies, and security compliance regulations.

Assign responsibility for ensuring compliance with these requirements and conducting regular audits to assess adherence.

Document and generate reports to prove evidence of compliance with any of the security standards that affect your systems.

Configure assets and services to adhere to VMware best practices and harden them against known vulnerabilities.

Disable or remove any unnecessary services or features in VMware that are not required for your specific use case. 

Implement network segmentation within your VMware environment: Segment the network into smaller, isolated segments to limit the spread of attacks. 

Install firewalls and intrusion detection systems (IDS) to monitor traffic and block unauthorized access.

Apply strong passwords or use multifactor authentication (MFA) for accessing administrative interfaces of VMware components to add an extra layer of security.

Visit the official VMware website often, and use the VMware vCenter Server, or VMware Update Manager to check for available updates.

Review release notes before proceeding with any updates.

Develop a plan for updating your VMware software. Consider scheduling maintenance windows to minimize disruption to operations.

Keep your VMware software, including hypervisors, management consoles, and associated components, up to date with the latest security patches.

Update VMware Tools on VMs running within your virtual infrastructure. You can update VMware Tools manually on each VM or use vCenter Update Manager to automate the process.

Assume zero-trust. No user should have access to your VMware environment until they've proven their identity and the security of their device.

Assign roles and permissions based on the principle of least privilege, granting users only the necessary privileges to perform their tasks. Thus, attackers will have limited access to the system even if they gain unauthorized access to a user's account.

Regularly review and update user access rights as needed.

Establish an incident response plan that outlines the steps to be taken in case of a security incident or breach. 

Analyze the context of the issues detected to prioritize remediation. Issue context should include relevant information from various sources – such as VMware articles, CVE databases, and the KEV catalog –  and information about whether or not an exploit is available. 

Follow remediation steps based on recommendations from VMware and industry experts.

Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of incident response team members and establish communication channels for reporting and addressing security incidents.

Create backups and replicas and store them outside your network to make sure your code and data are safe in the event of an attack. 

Use strict protection protocols to keep these backups safe from those who might harm you.

Before performing any updates, ensure you have a complete backup of critical data and configurations. Take snapshots of virtual machines (VMs) to create restore points.

Monitor logs for suspicious activities, such as unauthorized access attempts, privilege escalations, or unusual network traffic patterns. Regularly review and analyze these logs to detect potential security incidents.

Keep track of the security posture of the system and adapt to new threats and risks. This involves monitoring and assessing the effectiveness of the security controls and continuously improving them.

Regularly review and update security policies and procedures to ensure that they remain effective and relevant.

Provide regular cybersecurity training and awareness programs to educate employees about their responsibilities and best practices for protecting digital assets.

Foster a culture of cybersecurity ownership throughout the organization.

Train personnel on common threats facing your organization and how to respond to them.

Offer courses to your employees to recognize cyber threats such as phishing emails or social engineering.

Establish disciplinary or sanctions policies or processes for personnel found out of compliance with information security requirements.

Transform manual data collection and observation processes into automated and continuous system monitoring.

Explore solutions for automating vulnerability and compliance assessments, and IT Operations Management.

Adopt a platform that can be deployed across your entire technology stack: from on-premises to the cloud.

Look for a solution that does not send any sensitive data outside your organization to protect your data privacy.

Make sure to automate vulnerability and compliance assessments from development to production environments.

If your organization runs workloads in environments that are not connected to the Internet, make sure that the solution you choose is fully functional in air-gapped environments.

Find a platform capable of integrating with popular issue-tracking tools such as Jira or Service Now to effectively manage incidents.