So the question is, what happens if you do not apply some form of hardening to the applications that contain sensitive or crucial data? 

Not securing your applications by hardening can lead to: 

• Intellectual Property theft
• Piracy
• Vulnerability Discovery, 
• Malware-based Exploits
• Unauthorised data access and breaches. 

All this makes it important that high-value apps verify the original nature of their entire execution environment before unlocking sensitive functionality.

The application hardening prevents your systems from hackers in the following ways: 

• By installing and using firewalls. 
• It minimises security threats by creating a backup of the system. 
• It uses content filters to know about security issues. 
• It protects your system by using the Security Configuration Wizard.
• Application hardening works by Introducing authentication and authorization processes to restrict access systems, programs, and applications.

*It provides an organization or business with the ability to quickly strengthen and protect existing as well as new applications. 

*It provides the confidence to release high-value applications into unhealthy environments, such as desktop, mobile, public cloud and embedded. 

*It also provides an ability to react against debugging to prevent attackers’ attempts to hack sensitive data and modify code.

• Removing all the applications from your systems that are not being used. 
• Updating your applications regularly. 
• Restricting access to applications by using firewalls, content filters, and OS user authentication features. 
• Writing applications in languages that run in virtual machines as they provide an extra layer of security protection.

Application hardening prevents passive attacks such as decompiling & reverse engineering. Both of them are very dangerous for your business ecosystem and can make your applications vulnerable to security threats. 

It also plays an important role in preventing active attacks such as debugging and tampering. With the growth in online businesses, hackers remain active to tamper or misuse your confidential data that is stored in your high-value applications.