During a routine audit, you discover that a production server is using the default settings for its web server software, which include verbose error messages and sample applications. The server hosts sensitive customer data. What is the best immediate action to address this vulnerability?
Schedule a security review to consider future improvements beyond the default settings.
Read the web server software documentation to understand the purpose of default settings.
Change the default settings to a hardened configuration, ensuring verbose error messages and sample applications are disabled.
Keep the verbose error messages enabled for easier troubleshooting by administrators.
Changing the default settings to a secure configuration should be the immediate action taken because it eliminates unnecessary information leakage that may assist an attacker in exploiting the server. Removing the verbose error messages and sample applications reduces the risk of a security misconfiguration leading to potential attack vectors. Disabling unused services also helps reduce the attack surface. Reading documentation and scheduling future security reviews, although important, are not immediate actions for mitigating the discovered vulnerability.
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