Windows Server 2025, the latest iteration of Microsoft's flagship server operating system, introducing new features, enhanced performance, and improved security capabilities. However, with these updates come new potential vulnerabilities, bringing with it the need for robust security configurations to protect against evolving threats. This is where benchmarks and hardening practices come into play.
The Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmarks are a global leader in hardening baselines, recognized as the gold standard for securing IT systems and data. CIS provides a comprehensive set of best practices and hardening guidelines to help organizations achieve a strong security posture and compliance.
The CIS benchmarks for Windows Server 2025 have yet to be released, leaving many wondering when they will be available, and what to do in the meantime. In this article, we'll explore why CIS Benchmarks are essential, why there's a delay in their release, and what you can do to secure your systems while waiting for the official benchmarks.
When will the CIS benchmarks for Windows Server 2025 be released?
Although Windows Server 2025 has officially been released, at present, there is no official release date for the corresponding CIS benchmark, but why is that?
This delay is not unusual. CIS Benchmarks are typically published several months after the release of a new operating system. CIS benchmarks are developed through a collaborative community-driven process involving cybersecurity experts, government agencies, and private sector organizations.
Each new feature and security enhancement in Windows Server 2025 is required to go through an evaluation process to ensure stability, effectiveness and reliability. These steps include testing, peer reviews, and consensus-building, for each of the hundreds or even thousands of individual configurations which takes time.
Temporary Alternatives: What You Can Do Now
While waiting for the CIS benchmark release, it’s important to take proactive steps in protecting your server infrastructure. Along with industry best practices, there are a number of temporary alternatives which can help bolster security settings. These include the Microsoft Security Baselines, which offers a preliminary security baseline, and open source variants such as this one found on GitHub. Another temporary option would be using the CIS benchmark for Windows server 2022, although outdated, it still provides a relative baseline. These options offer essential security configurations and policies that can help reduce their attack surfaces whilst awaiting the official CIS release.
The Importance of CIS Benchmarks
CIS benchmarks are industry recognized security guidelines that provide detailed, consensus-based frameworks and best practices for configuring IT systems securely.
They offer benchmarks for over 100 systems, covering a wide range of operating systems, cloud services, and network devices.
These benchmarks are widely used across industries such as finance, insurance, healthcare, and by governments to meet compliance standards like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, NIST, and ISO 27001. Following these benchmarks, organizations ensure server configurations align with industry best practices, reducing vulnerabilities, and mitigating risks posed by cyber threats.
How to apply CIS benchmarks once released
Once the CIS benchmarks are available, it is important to implement them as promptly as possibly. Here is how you can prepare:
- Stay informed: Subscribe to CIS and Calcom email notifications to be updated about the release as quickly as possible.
- Assess your environment: Conduct a thorough audit of your current server configurations and identify any gaps and areas of improvement. Verify that existing applications and services align with the new security settings.
- Plan for implementation: Develop a structured plan, including testing in a non-production environment before applying changes to a live system.
- Implement changes: Gradually apply security configurations, keeping note of any changes being made in the case of something working incorrectly.
- Automate: Using scripts and automation tools, such as Calcom's Hardening Suite to streamline the implementation process and ensure consistent compliance across all systems.
Challenges of Manual Hardening
With thousands of configurations, each needing to be adjusted depending on system type and function, manually configuring a server to meet CIS benchmarks can be time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to scale. Organizations with large-scale infrastructures often struggle with ensuring consistency across multiple servers, increasing the risk of misconfigurations.
Over time as benchmarks are updated, and the cyber environment changes, continuous monitoring and adjustment can quickly snowball into a significant challenge.
Simplification Through Automation
Server hardening automation tools such as Calcom's Hardening Suite (CHS) can be used to streamline the process of benchmark implementation, reducing complexity and ensuring compliance from day one.
Automation condenses the hardening process down, saving time without sacrificing accuracy or consistency across one or multiple servers and environments. By integrating automation into security hardening, organizations can achieve a higher level of security with less effort, and less human error, freeing IT teams to focus on other critical tasks.
Be Prepared with Calcom
Want to stay ahead? At Calcom, we specialise in helping organisations automate and streamline their server hardening processes, legacy or current. Don't wait for CIS benchmarks to secure your servers, get in touch with our team for tailored advice and a demo to see how Calcom CHS can simplify and keep you secure and compliant.
Staying Secure
While the CIS benchmarks for Windows Server 2025 are not yet available, organizations can adopt temporary security measures to secure your systems. Staying proactive by way of following industry best practices, open source and Microsoft's own baseline can help mitigate risks and ensure a smooth transition to being fully secured.
