Which of the following tasks is the responsibility of a Linux systems administrator who is deploying hardening scripts to his systems?

Running hardening scripts before configuring system services is incorrect because the scripts must be tailored to the services that will actually run - applying them first could conflict with or undo subsequent service configurations.

Hardening scripts are not part of the default OS installation process - they are applied post-install as a deliberate administrative action and are not automatically included by OS vendors.

Hardening scripts modify OS settings, disable services, and change permissions in ways that can break application dependencies if not validated first. Testing in a development environment allows the administrator to identify conflicts with installed services, application requirements, or site-specific configurations before impacting production systems. This follows the standard change management principle of validating changes in a non-production environment.

Applying identical scripts to every Linux host ignores the fact that different hosts have different roles (web server, database, DNS) and therefore different service profiles that require role-specific hardening tailored to each host's function.