System hardening. System hardening is the process of securing a system by reducing its surface of vulnerability, which is larger when a system performs more functions. In contrast to system hardening, which is performed once, patch management, vulnerability scanning, and log monitoring are ongoing processes. By hardening the VDI instances, the provider can prevent users from installing prohibited software or making unauthorized changes to the system configuration. This can be done by applying security policies, disabling unnecessary services, removing default accounts, and enforcing strong passwords. For more information on system hardening, you can refer to the CompTIA Cloud+ CV0-003 Certification Study Guide1 or the CompTIA Cloud+ (Plus) Certification website2.