disable password authentication for sshd

disable password authentication for sshd

This is considered good practice for any linux platform that has publicly addressable interfaces... Of course you will need to setup PKI public/private keys for any secure login. I am not suggesting that you turn off authentication entirely !
I had a VPS linux host out there untended for a while, and the hackers find it irresistible - there were 11,000+ authentication failures in the logs.

To stop password authentication by sshd, just add these entries to your /etc/sh/sshd_config file:
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no PasswordAuthentication no UsePAM no