Welcome to the Checklist Olympics

Securing a web server used to be easy:

1. Install Apache or NGINX.
2. Get a certificate.
3. Serve your website.

Today? You’re in a never-ending game of compliance whack-a-mole.

Let’s take a tour of the ever-growing list of "basics."

🔒 TLS and Certificates – Where It All Begins (and Often Ends)

• HTTPS: Still the gold standard, but only if configured correctly.
• TLS 1.0 & 1.1: Legacy relics. Disable them immediately.
• TLS 1.2: Still mainstream but aging.
• TLS 1.3: Faster, more secure—and often misconfigured.
• Cipher Suites: Choose wisely. Many are outdated, others are just bad ideas.
• Certificate Chains: Check your intermediates. Browsers sure will.
• OCSP Stapling: Because checking revocation shouldn’t involve a time machine.
• HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security): Forces HTTPS—unless you mess it up and brick your subdomains.

🧾 DNS Records – Because Security Starts Before the Request Arrives

• CAA (Certification Authority Authorization): Controls who can issue certs for your domain. Often forgotten.
• TLSA (for DANE): Cryptographically ties your cert to DNSSEC. Almost no one uses it.
• DNSSEC: Validates DNS data integrity. Good luck getting your entire DNS chain to cooperate.

🛡️ HTTP Headers – The Security Settings Nobody Reads

• Content-Security-Policy (CSP): Blocks inline scripts, prevents XSS. Also breaks half your website.
• X-Frame-Options: Stops clickjacking. Basic but still needed.
• X-Content-Type-Options: Because browsers are too smart for their own good.
• Referrer-Policy: Decide what crumbs you leave behind.
• Permissions-Policy: Say no to browser features you never asked for.
• Cross-Origin headers (CORS): When misconfigured, they turn your server into a public API.

✉️ But Wait, There's More – Because Why Should Email Feel Left Out?

• MTA-STS: Enforces TLS for mail delivery. Defined via DNS and a static HTTPS file.
• security.txt: A polite way of saying "please don’t hack us"—linked in .well-known/ and often ignored.
• Server banners: Because telling attackers which version of OpenSSL you’re using is such a good idea.

🧪 Other Essentials for the Truly Paranoid

• Rate limiting and fail2ban: Stop brute-force noise.
• Web Application Firewall (WAF): Often a bandaid, occasionally helpful.
• Reverse proxy hardening: Your CDN or reverse proxy is now your real perimeter.
• Error page sanitization: Because 500 errors shouldn’t include your stack trace.
• Dependency hygiene: Your site is only as secure as your least-patched JavaScript library.
• Log monitoring & alerting: Because silence doesn’t mean safety.

The Catch: You Can Do All This and Still Get Hacked

• All headers set?
• TLS modern and strict?
• DNS records secure?
• External scans pass with flying colors?

Great. Now hope your CMS plugin isn’t vulnerable, your devs didn’t leave a debug port open, and your admin didn’t reuse a password from 2014.

Conclusion: Web Server Security Is a Game of Margins

Perfect security doesn’t exist. But stacking these measures makes your server a much harder target.

So yes—do the checklist. Harden your TLS. Lock down your headers. But stay humble.

Because behind every hardened web server is an attacker just waiting for a new CVE to drop.

Read more at Security-Management.org – while your certificate is still valid.