Disable Direct Root Login

Allowing the root user to login directly is a major security issue, we’ll show you how to disable it so you can still login as root but just not directly, reducing the security issue…

This will force a hacker to have to guess 2 seperate passwords to gain root access. (you do have 2 seperate passwords for admin and root right?)  What happens is you’ll first need to login as your admin user in SSH, then switch to the super user with the su command to get root.
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recovering root password

Boot into single usermode or boot using rescue disk.

If Grub is password protected then use the rescue disk, chroot /mnt/sysimage, then use the passwd command.

If Grub is not password protected, then you can login to single usermode by appending an “S” to the end of the kernel line that you have to boot. Select the kernel that you wish to boot with and press ‘e’.

Now append an ‘S’ to the end of the line, press Return, and then ‘b’, once the system is booted into single usermode you can use the passwd command to reset the root password.

On debian base system you can use the following method

Choose the kernel you want to boot

Press “e” to edit

Press the “end” button type in a comma space “, ” and then type “single”
Press and than “b” to boot that kernel, this will take into single user mod

Install PRM Process Resource Monitor

PRM (Process Resource Monitor)

Introduction
PRM monitors the process table on a given system and matches process id’s with set resource limits in the config file or per-process based rules. Process id’s that match or exceed the set limits are logged and killed; includes e-mail alerts, kernel logging routine and more……

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