- My VPS provider (Vultr) allows inserting a public key at the time of a new instance creation, so I created a new key using an existing Linux command line:
ssh-keygen -t rsa - Name server hostname (I used these instructions (archive) for hostname)
- Set reverse DNS in VPS server console equal to FQDN
- Change SSH port & disable password authentication with
sudo nano "/etc/ssh/sshd_config"then restart ssh
sudo systemctl restart ssh - create non root user, copy .ssh folder from root to their profile, making sure to
chown newuserfor the authorized_keys file, and add the user to group sudo –sudo addgroup groupname. - Add auto security updates.
sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades
sudo dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades
sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades **requires root email for notifications* - Set time zone
sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
materializing potentiality