# Security

# Introduction

# Initial Connection

Sign in to your VPS through your root user to begin the procedure.

# Staying up-to-date!

One of the first thing you'll want to do whenever you setup a VPS, is to make sure that you're using the latest and greatest stuff available.

# Terminal Shell

# Shell Installation

Default oh-my-zsh settings

Setup .zshrc in /etc/skel for new users

Copy .zshrc to the root user

# powerlevel9k theme

# Powerline Fonts (optional?)

# Theme

Use custom theme settings vim /usr/share/oh-my-zsh/powerlevel9k.sh

Change shell

Reboot

# User Account

Next, you'll want to create a new user account. It is considered bad practice to run anything through the root user, and you certainly shouldn't be the one exception. You are however, giving the new user account access to the sudo group for elevated permissions.

Immediately after executing the above command, you'll be prompted to enter a password a total of two times.

# Generating an SSH Key

Another security measure you are going to adopt is to disable password authentication, and only rely on SSH keys. In order to do so though, you must first generate a SSH key on your local machine.

Immediately after executing the above command, you'll be prompted to enter a password a total of three times.

Make sure the SSH key has the correct permissions by executing the following command:

# Dependencies

If you haven't already, you'll need to install ssh-copy-id from Homebrew (OS X).

# Activation

Once the dependencies are installed, you need to copy your newly generated SSH key over to the VPS. This will allow us to disable password authentication and replace it with SSH authentication in the next step.

# Confirmation

This step is optional, but if you would like to verify that the SSH key was successfully transferred across — execute the following command on your VPS.

You should see an entry with <variable identifier="Email Address" /> (RSA) highlighted.