Some of the best practices for managing the Common Services securely and efficiently are as follows:
Install Common Services on its own partition.
Use strong and separate passwords for Window Administrator and CiscoWorks Common Services.
Avoid creating network shares on the CiscoWorks Common Services Server.
Disable unnecessary accounts.
Secure the Registry of the Windows platform.
Apply all hot fixes and patches as soon as they are available.
Disable unused and unneeded services.
Disable all protocols except TCP/IP.
Monitor the activities of your system regularly with Auditing/Reporting Tools. Cisco Security Agent (CSA) Management Console (MC), which is a component of VMS bundle, can be installed to monitor the stopping of malicious activity on the server.
Limit physical access to the server. This is extremely important, as with physical access, CiscoWorks Common Services server function can be disrupted very badly.