Automating CIS Compliance & GDPR Governance: A CTO’s Blueprint for Post-Schrems II Infrastructure

If you are still managing server compliance with Excel spreadsheets and annual manual audits, you are already compromised. It isn’t a matter of if, but when a misconfiguration exposes your user database. In the wake of the Schrems II ruling, reliance on US-centric cloud providers has become a legal minefield for Norwegian businesses. Datatilsynet (The Norwegian Data Protection Authority) has made it clear: technical safeguards must be verifiable and continuous.

We are going to dismantle the traditional approach to compliance. We will build an automated, code-driven security posture using tools available right now in late 2022. No fluff. Just raw configuration and architectural reality.

The Jurisdiction Trap: Why Hardware Ownership Matters

Before we touch `apt-get`, we need to address the physical layer. Compliance is legally tethered to geography. When you deploy on a hyperscaler, you are often subject to the US CLOUD Act, regardless of where the data center resides physically. This creates a friction point with GDPR Art. 44-50.

For high-sensitivity workloads—finance, health, public sector—the safest architectural decision is utilizing infrastructure where the legal entity and the physical hardware reside within the EEA/Norway. This is why we engineered CoolVDS with data centers physically located in Oslo. We use KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) virtualization. Unlike container-based virtualization (like OpenVZ), KVM provides full kernel isolation. This means your memory segments and CPU instructions are distinct from the neighbor next door. That is not just performance; that is a compliance requirement for strict multi-tenancy isolation.

Step 1: Automating the Baseline with OpenSCAP

The Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmarks are the gold standard. Manually checking 300+ parameters on a server is insanity. We use OpenSCAP. It implements the SCAP (Security Content Automation Protocol) standard to audit your system against a profile.

Here is how you install and run a compliance scan on an Ubuntu 22.04 LTS instance (standard on CoolVDS):

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y libopenscap8 ssg-base ssg-deb ssg-modules ssg-utils

# List available profiles for Ubuntu 22.04
oscap info /usr/share/xml/scap/ssg/content/ssg-ubuntu2204-ds.xml

You will likely see profiles like xccdf_org.ssgproject.content_profile_cis_level2_server. Level 2 is strict. It might break production if you aren't careful. Let's run a scan and generate an HTML report:

oscap xccdf eval \
 --profile xccdf_org.ssgproject.content_profile_cis_level1_server \
 --results-arf arf.xml \
 --report report.html \
 /usr/share/xml/scap/ssg/content/ssg-ubuntu2204-ds.xml

Pro Tip: Running SCAP scans is I/O intensive. It reads thousands of system files effectively simultaneously. On budget VPS providers with shared spinning disks (HDD), this process can skyrocket iowait and cause application latency spikes. CoolVDS instances run on NVMe storage arrays. We consistently see SCAP scans complete 4x faster compared to standard SATA SSDs, with zero impact on neighboring processes.

Step 2: Remediation via Ansible (Infrastructure as Code)

Scanning identifies the rot. Ansible cuts it out. Do not remediate manually. If you change a config file by hand, it will drift back within months. Define your state.

Below is a pragmatic Ansible task list targeting common failures in Norwegian enterprise audits: SSH hardening and IP stack restrictions.

---
- name: Harden SSH and Network Stack
  hosts: all
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Ensure SSH protocol 2 is enforced
      lineinfile:
        path: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
        regexp: '^Protocol'
        line: 'Protocol 2'
        state: present
        validate: '/usr/sbin/sshd -t -f %s'

    - name: Disable SSH Root Login
      lineinfile:
        path: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
        regexp: '^PermitRootLogin'
        line: 'PermitRootLogin no'
        state: present
        notify: Restart SSH

    - name: Disable IPv6 if not needed (reduces attack surface)
      sysctl:
        name: net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6
        value: '1'
        state: present
        reload: yes

  handlers:
    - name: Restart SSH
      service:
        name: sshd
        state: restarted

The Performance Tax of Security

Security is not free. Enabling full disk encryption (LUKS), implementing strict auditd logging, and running real-time intrusion detection systems (like Wazuh or Fail2Ban) consumes CPU cycles.

Step 3: Database Governance (MySQL/MariaDB)

GDPR Article 32 requires "pseudonymisation and encryption of personal data." At the database level, this means data at rest encryption. In MariaDB 10.5+ (available now), this is straightforward but often skipped.

Add this to your my.cnf or server.cnf:

[mysqld]
plugin_load_add = file_key_management
file_key_management_filename = /etc/mysql/encryption/keyfile.enc
file_key_management_filekey = FILE:/etc/mysql/encryption/keyfile.key
file_key_management_encryption_algorithm = AES_CTR

innodb_encrypt_tables = FORCE
innodb_encrypt_log = ON
innodb_encryption_threads = 4

Warning: innodb_encryption_threads allows parallel encryption/decryption. If your VPS has only 1 vCPU, setting this to 4 will cause context-switching thrashing. We recommend a minimum of 4 vCPUs on CoolVDS for encrypted database workloads to handle the cryptographic overhead without stalling query processing.

The "CoolVDS" Factor: Sovereignty meets Speed

You can script all the security in the world, but if your host has noisy neighbors or legally ambiguous data residency, you are building on sand. We built CoolVDS for the paranoid. We own the hardware. We manage the network. We optimize for high-performance compliance.

When you deploy a node with us, you aren't just getting a VM. You are getting a predictable, hardened environment where steal time is virtually non-existent, and your data remains under Norwegian jurisdiction. For DevOps teams facing the end of 2022, that peace of mind is the only metric that matters.

Next Step: Stop guessing your compliance posture. Deploy a fresh Ubuntu 22.04 instance on CoolVDS today, run the OpenSCAP scan provided above, and see the difference a dedicated NVMe backend makes.