Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto. You probably secure shell into your Linux servers throughout the day. Hopefully, you’ve set those servers up such that you’re using SSH Key Authentication.

Linux SSH servers, in particular, stand out to cyberattackers. Their ability to provide remote command-line access positions them as essential conduits for controlling and managing server operations.

Get these set up on a test server, make sure it works, and then once you’ve got the hang of it make it happen on all of your Linux servers. This is absolutely rock-solid SSH security.

To set up SSH key authentication, you'll need at least two Linux machines, one you log in to and one you log in from. I'll demonstrate with Pop!_OS as my desktop and Ubuntu Server as my remote server.

Keep in mind, though, that the server has to have certain options set to do some of the most interesting things, so if you don’t control the ssh server, some of these tricks might not work for you.

In conjunction with fail2ban, SSH key authentication is a great way to prevent unwanted SSH logins. And there you have it -- five easy ways of securing SSH on both your Linux desktops and servers.

In this article, I'll discuss how I chose which Linux distribution to use, how I set up NFS on Linux and connected ESXi to NFS. Before I start, however, I should first briefly discuss NFS, and two ...