Borderless CS’s launch of IT Hardening Expert Services arrives at a moment when simple misconfigurations and unmaintained defaults are repeatedly exposed as the weakest links in enterprise security, and the firm is pitching a pragmatic, standards-aligned program to shrink attack surfaces across Windows, Linux, macOS, cloud, IoT and edge estates.
Borderless CS, an Australian cyber‑security provider that advertises CREST recognition and ISO 27001:2022 certification, has published a structured IT hardening offering aimed at reducing the common, preventable causes of breaches — misconfigurations, unpatched systems and default settings. The company positions the service as an outcomes-driven programme: baseline security configurations, removal of redundant services, privilege reduction, MFA and ongoing monitoring across on‑premise and cloud estates. (borderlesscs.com.au, securitybrief.com.au)
IT hardening is a core defensive discipline rather than a single product. At its most effective it is a repeatable engineering process: define secure baselines; remove services and privileges you do not need; configure robust controls; test and measure; and then continuously monitor and patch. Borderless CS frames its delivery against well-known standards — including CIS Benchmarks, ISO 27001:2022, NIST CSF 2.0 and the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s Essential Eight — while offering platform‑specific coverage for Microsoft 365/Azure, AWS, GCP, Windows Server, common Linux distributions, VMware and myriad enterprise applications. (borderlesscs.com.au, cyber.gov.au)
Gartner’s cloud research warns that the vast majority of cloud security failures will be the customer’s responsibility rather than cloud provider faults; Gartner has stated that "through 2025, 99% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault." That forecast reinforces the responsibility shift when organisations move workloads to public clouds. (gartner.com)
Other analyses show a range of figures: sector studies and vendor reports have identified misconfiguration as the root cause for large shares of vulnerabilities or breaches (for example, some vulnerability analyses identify more than 80% of assessed problems as stemming from misconfiguration), while breach reports such as Verizon’s DBIR emphasise a large human element (74% of breaches include a human factor). These differences reflect varying definitions (vulnerabilities vs. breaches vs. incidents) and underline the need for caution when citing a single percentage as definitive. (infosecurity-magazine.com, ico.org.uk)
Because public reporting sometimes amplifies rounded or vendor‑specific statistics, any single claim (for example "80% of breaches are due to misconfiguration") should be treated as directional: the consistent, verifiable point is that configuration errors and human factors are material contributors to security incidents. Hardening addresses those vectors directly. (informationweek.com, tripwire.com)
At the same time, procurement teams and technical owners must validate the execution details: clarify scope, insist on measurable KPIs, require IaC and CI/CD integration to prevent drift, and demand compatibility testing. Industry statistics about misconfiguration and cloud responsibility — including Gartner’s forecast that the vast majority of cloud security failures will be customers’ responsibility — support the urgency of hardening, but single percentage points in press releases vary by study and should be treated as directional rather than absolute. (gartner.com, infosecurity-magazine.com)
Borderless CS’s service proposition is timely and, if delivered with the discipline their standards claims imply, can materially reduce some of the most common and preventable causes of compromise. Organizations planning to buy hardening should treat the engagement as an engineering programme — not a one‑off consultancy — and embed its outputs into provisioning, change control and incident response so that hardening becomes lasting resilience rather than a transient report. (securitybrief.com.au, cisecurity.org)
Borderless CS’s announcement adds to an essential conversation: the most powerful security gains often come not from exotic new technology but from disciplined, repeatable engineering that eliminates obvious mistakes. Hardening, measured and maintained, remains one of the highest‑leverage investments for organisations seeking to reduce the most common routes to compromise. (borderlesscs.com.au, cyber.gov.au)
Source: SecurityBrief Australia Borderless CS unveils IT hardening to combat cyber vulnerabilities
Background
Borderless CS, an Australian cyber‑security provider that advertises CREST recognition and ISO 27001:2022 certification, has published a structured IT hardening offering aimed at reducing the common, preventable causes of breaches — misconfigurations, unpatched systems and default settings. The company positions the service as an outcomes-driven programme: baseline security configurations, removal of redundant services, privilege reduction, MFA and ongoing monitoring across on‑premise and cloud estates. (borderlesscs.com.au, securitybrief.com.au)IT hardening is a core defensive discipline rather than a single product. At its most effective it is a repeatable engineering process: define secure baselines; remove services and privileges you do not need; configure robust controls; test and measure; and then continuously monitor and patch. Borderless CS frames its delivery against well-known standards — including CIS Benchmarks, ISO 27001:2022, NIST CSF 2.0 and the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s Essential Eight — while offering platform‑specific coverage for Microsoft 365/Azure, AWS, GCP, Windows Server, common Linux distributions, VMware and myriad enterprise applications. (borderlesscs.com.au, cyber.gov.au)
What “IT hardening” means in practice
The engineering concept
IT hardening is the process of reducing the attack surface of systems by adopting secure configurations, disabling unnecessary functions and layering controls to limit the impact of compromise. It is not purely cosmetic — a hardened host resists lateral movement, reduces exploitable vectors and simplifies incident response. Effective hardening involves a mix of:- Secure baseline configurations that are auditable and repeatable.
- Privileged access reduction and enforcement of least privilege.
- Strong authentication such as Multi‑Factor Authentication (MFA).
- Patch and vulnerability management with defined SLAs.
- Network and perimeter hardening — firewalls, VPNs, router hardening.
- Application and cloud configuration review mapped to vendor best practices. (cisecurity.org, cyber.gov.au)
Why baseline templates matter
Baseline templates codify configuration decisions so that identical systems are consistently secured. They allow automation (configuration management, image hardening) and provide a measurable starting point for compliance and incident triage. Organizations that use standards‑mapped baselines — for example CIS Benchmarks Level 1/Level 2 — can both reduce human error and demonstrate audit‑ready controls. (cisecurity.org)Borderless CS’s offering: scope and features
Borderless CS presents the IT Hardening service as a modular suite that can be tailored to customer needs. The company highlights the following capabilities:- Secure baseline configurations for Windows, Linux and macOS.
- Removal of redundant services and secure patch management on servers and endpoints.
- Privilege reduction and MFA implementation for Active Directory and identity platforms.
- Configuration reviews for major cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP, Oracle Cloud).
- Hardening of web and enterprise applications, and fortification of firewalls, VPNs and routers.
- Policy-based security for mobile and IoT assets, and coverage for edge devices.
- Ongoing monitoring and measurement to convert baselines into continuous resilience. (borderlesscs.com.au, securitybrief.com.au)
Standards and credibility: CIS, ISO, NIST, ACSC and CREST
Borderless CS is explicit about aligning work to industry standards. That alignment matters because standards provide a measured, auditable foundation for hardening efforts:- CIS Benchmarks are community‑driven prescriptive configuration guides for operating systems, cloud, containers, databases and network gear. Using CIS reduces ambiguity when building vendor‑specific baselines. (cisecurity.org)
- ACSC Essential Eight provides an Australian government‑backed baseline of eight mitigation strategies (patch apps/OS, MFA, restrict admin privileges, application control, macro controls, user hardening and backups) with a maturity model tied to threat exposure. For Australia and organisations governed by its frameworks, the Essential Eight is highly relevant. (cyber.gov.au)
- NIST CSF 2.0 (released as the updated Cybersecurity Framework) adds governance emphasis and updated subcategories; mapping hardening actions to CSF outcomes helps align technical work to enterprise risk. (kudelskisecurity.com, blog.netwrix.com)
- ISO 27001:2022 remains the leading ISMS standard; hardening activities slot under technical and operational controls required by an ISO‑compliant ISMS. (protiviti.com)
- CREST accreditation is an industry recognition for providers of penetration testing, incident response and related services — a useful indicator of technical competency where held. (crest-approved.org)
The problem hardening tries to fix: misconfiguration and human error
Borderless CS stresses that most breaches arise from preventable mistakes — misconfigured services, unchanged defaults, and missed patches — and cites industry findings to underline urgency. There is strong industry consensus that configuration issues are a dominant cause of incidents, but the precise percentages vary by dataset, definition and scope.Gartner’s cloud research warns that the vast majority of cloud security failures will be the customer’s responsibility rather than cloud provider faults; Gartner has stated that "through 2025, 99% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault." That forecast reinforces the responsibility shift when organisations move workloads to public clouds. (gartner.com)
Other analyses show a range of figures: sector studies and vendor reports have identified misconfiguration as the root cause for large shares of vulnerabilities or breaches (for example, some vulnerability analyses identify more than 80% of assessed problems as stemming from misconfiguration), while breach reports such as Verizon’s DBIR emphasise a large human element (74% of breaches include a human factor). These differences reflect varying definitions (vulnerabilities vs. breaches vs. incidents) and underline the need for caution when citing a single percentage as definitive. (infosecurity-magazine.com, ico.org.uk)
Because public reporting sometimes amplifies rounded or vendor‑specific statistics, any single claim (for example "80% of breaches are due to misconfiguration") should be treated as directional: the consistent, verifiable point is that configuration errors and human factors are material contributors to security incidents. Hardening addresses those vectors directly. (informationweek.com, tripwire.com)
Strengths of Borderless CS’s hardening proposition
- Standards‑led approach. Mapping baselines to CIS Benchmarks, NIST CSF and ACSC Essential Eight provides objective, auditable controls rather than bespoke, unmeasured tweaks. This helps security, audit and compliance teams align technical work with governance requirements. (cisecurity.org, cyber.gov.au)
- Platform breadth. Offering coverage across Windows, Linux, macOS, cloud providers and network devices is realistic for a consultancy with broad penetration testing and managed services experience — it reduces risk of blind spots in hybrid estates. (borderlesscs.com.au)
- Operational focus. Emphasising privilege reduction, MFA, patch management and removal of unnecessary services targets high‑impact controls that reduce exploitability and lateral movement — the same controls called out in modern frameworks. (cyber.gov.au, kudelskisecurity.com)
- Continuous posture and monitoring promise. Hardening is not a one‑off. Borderless CS’s inclusion of ongoing monitoring and measurable outcomes acknowledges the need for continuous improvement and drift detection. (securitybrief.com.au)
- Local/regional awareness. For organisations operating in Australia and the Pacific, the firm’s claimed alignment with ACSC guidance and local regulatory expectations is a business benefit for procurement and compliance. (borderlesscs.com.au, cyber.gov.au)
Risks, limitations and areas to probe before buying
- Vendor claims vs. delivered scope. The promised coverage (dozens of OS families, edge, IoT, cloud platforms) is broad. Buyers must confirm the exact scope in Statements of Work (SoWs) — what commodity OS versions are covered, what bespoke applications need separate baselining, and what testing windows are required. Broad claims without a clear scope can lead to gaps or surprise bills. (borderlesscs.com.au)
- Operational impact of hardening (performance and compatibility). Some Level‑2 or “high‑assurance” hardening actions can break legacy applications. A professional hardening engagement must include compatibility testing and rollback plans; prove this in the project timeline. (cisecurity.org)
- Measurement and KPIs. “Measurable outcomes” is a positive promise, but clients should insist on specific Key Performance Indicators: percentage reduction in high/critical misconfigurations, time‑to‑patch SLA improvements, reduction in privileged accounts, and measurable MFA coverage. Without clear KPIs, “improvement” is anecdotal. (securitybrief.com.au)
- Supply chain and configuration drift. Hardening at one moment is meaningless if automated pipelines, IaC (Infrastructure as Code) templates, or third‑party integrators reintroduce insecure defaults. Clients must verify that hardening is integrated into CI/CD, provisioning and asset onboarding. (kudelskisecurity.com)
- Statistics caution. Borderless CS cites industry figures about misconfiguration and cloud failure causes; some of these numbers are hard to trace to a single primary source or are aggregation of multiple studies. Procurement teams should request the primary source or accept these as indicative rather than precise. Where Borderless CS cites Gartner’s cloud‑failure forecasts, that specific Gartner finding is verifiable; other percentages (e.g., “80% of breaches due to misconfiguration”) vary widely across studies and should be qualified. (gartner.com, infosecurity-magazine.com)
What buyers should demand in a hardening engagement
When contracting a hardening provider — whether Borderless CS or another vendor — IT and security leaders should require:- Clear scope and inventory: A list of covered systems, OS versions, cloud accounts, critical applications and network equipment.
- Standards mapping: Explicit mapping to the chosen benchmarks (CIS level, ACSC maturity level, NIST CSF categories).
- Change control and testing procedures: Compatibility testing, rollback plans and maintenance windows.
- Automation and IaC integration: Use of configuration management (Ansible, Chef, Puppet, Salt, or IaC templates) so hardening becomes part of provisioning.
- Drift detection and monitoring: Continuous validation, alerting and remediation workflows for configuration drift.
- KPIs and reporting cadence: Measurable metrics (e.g., reduction in critical misconfigurations, patch compliance rate, MFA adoption rate) reported monthly/quarterly.
- Knowledge transfer and runbooks: Documentation, runbooks and staff training so internal teams can sustain controls.
- Third‑party testing: Independent verification (e.g., penetration test, configuration audit) post‑deployment and periodically thereafter.
A Windows administrator’s checklist: prioritized hardening steps
The following is a focused, practical checklist for Windows environments (on‑premises and Azure) that complements any vendor engagement and aligns with the controls Borderless CS emphasises:- Inventory assets and exposures: use automated discovery to find all Windows servers, workstations, Azure subscriptions and identities.
- Apply CIS or vendor hardening baseline (start with CIS Level 1): ensure standard GPOs or configuration profiles are applied across domain‑joined devices. (cisecurity.org)
- Enforce Multi‑Factor Authentication for all privileged access and admin portals; extend to critical service accounts where possible. (cyber.gov.au)
- Implement Just‑In‑Time (JIT) and Just‑Enough‑Administration (JEA) for privileged tasks; limit standing admin groups. (kudelskisecurity.com)
- Harden RDP and remote access points: do not expose RDP directly; use VPNs, bastion hosts or Azure Bastion. Test MFA for remote admin access.
- Ensure robust patching cadence: apply critical patches within vendor-recommended windows; measure time‑to‑patch for critical vulnerabilities. (cyber.gov.au)
- Disable or remove unnecessary services and default accounts; document exceptions via change control.
- Enforce secure logging, centralised SIEM ingestion and retention policies for forensic readiness; test alerts for suspicious privilege escalation or lateral movement.
- Harden Identity: enable conditional access policies, require device compliance checks and segment authentication flows for sensitive workloads.
- Automate configuration drift detection and link remediation to ticketing and change control.
Measuring success: metrics that matter
- Reduction in the count of high/critical misconfigurations across scanned assets.
- Patch compliance percentage within 48 hours for critical vulnerabilities (or organisation‑defined SLA).
- Percentage of privileged accounts reduced or protected by MFA/conditional access.
- Mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to remediate (MTTR) configuration deviations.
- Number of production incidents attributable to configuration error (trend over time).
Cost, value and the hardening ROI argument
Hardening investments typically yield favourable ROI because they prevent high‑impact, high‑cost incidents (ransomware, data loss, regulatory fines). The economics work two ways:- Preventative hardening lowers probability and blast radius of breaches — reducing expected incident costs.
- Standardised baselines reduce operational toil (fewer emergency patches, less firefighting), which lowers recurring OPEX.
Final assessment: valuable, but validate the details
Borderless CS’s IT Hardening Expert Services align with what best practice says: focus on baselines, remove unnecessary attack surface, enforce identity controls and integrate continuous monitoring. The vendor’s emphasis on standards (CIS, NIST CSF 2.0, ISO 27001 and ACSC Essential Eight) and CREST recognition are positive indicators for buyers seeking an outcomes‑oriented partner. (borderlesscs.com.au, crest-approved.org)At the same time, procurement teams and technical owners must validate the execution details: clarify scope, insist on measurable KPIs, require IaC and CI/CD integration to prevent drift, and demand compatibility testing. Industry statistics about misconfiguration and cloud responsibility — including Gartner’s forecast that the vast majority of cloud security failures will be customers’ responsibility — support the urgency of hardening, but single percentage points in press releases vary by study and should be treated as directional rather than absolute. (gartner.com, infosecurity-magazine.com)
Borderless CS’s service proposition is timely and, if delivered with the discipline their standards claims imply, can materially reduce some of the most common and preventable causes of compromise. Organizations planning to buy hardening should treat the engagement as an engineering programme — not a one‑off consultancy — and embed its outputs into provisioning, change control and incident response so that hardening becomes lasting resilience rather than a transient report. (securitybrief.com.au, cisecurity.org)
Borderless CS’s announcement adds to an essential conversation: the most powerful security gains often come not from exotic new technology but from disciplined, repeatable engineering that eliminates obvious mistakes. Hardening, measured and maintained, remains one of the highest‑leverage investments for organisations seeking to reduce the most common routes to compromise. (borderlesscs.com.au, cyber.gov.au)
Source: SecurityBrief Australia Borderless CS unveils IT hardening to combat cyber vulnerabilities