Lock down your server.

Generate UFW commands that allow your chosen services and deny other inbound traffic by default. Review the access rules before applying them.

Every open port is a door

Hardening a server sounds like a project; the firewall is the 80/20. Internet-wide scanners hit every public IP constantly, cataloguing open ports and the software behind them, and the things that get breached are almost always things that didn't need to be reachable in the first place — a database on a default port, an admin panel, a forgotten dev server. Deny-by-default makes all of that simply invisible, and you allow back only the two or three ports you actually serve.

Setting it once is a copy-paste. Ongoing assurance requires independent verification on each relevant host; a control plane can contribute selected managed-host evidence but does not keep every firewall policy universally honest.