this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
166 points (95.6% liked)

Linux

48212 readers
795 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Most companies I've worked at where employees had a Microsoft work computers. They were under heavy control, even with admin privileges. I was wondering, for a corporate environment, how employees'Linux desktops could be kept under control in a similar way. What would be an open source or Linux based alternative to the following:

  • policy control
  • Software Center with software allow lists
  • controlled OS updates
  • zscaler
  • software detection tool to detect what's been installed and determine if any unallowed software is present
  • antivirus
  • VPN

I can think of a few things, like a company having it's own software repos, or using an atomic distribution. There's already open source VPN solutions if course. But for everything else I don't really know what could be used or what setup we could have.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago (2 children)

but the best way to avoid getting them is still to just avoiding stupid shit.

This is fine and dandy on a personal pc, but in a work environment you are now being actively targeted by malicious actors if your company is a good target.

Constantly.

So once you are in that zone you do need some fast acting reactive tools that keep watch for viruses.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Didn't say it was the only way, just the best way. Most effective attacks are still against humans, not computers.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You can restrict what gets installed by running your own repos and locking the machines to only use those (either give employees accounts with no sudo access, or have monitoring that alerts when repo configs are changed).

So once you are in that zone you do need some fast acting reactive tools that keep watch for viruses.

For anti-malware, I don't think there are very many agents available to the public that work well on Linux, but they do exist inside big companies that use Linux for their employee environments. For forensics and incident response there is GRR, which has Linux support.

Canonical may have some offering in this space, but I'm not familiar with their products.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

The best methods to detect and prevent attacks on your endpoints are EDR software that are linked to your corporate router like FortiEDR, which supports Windows, Mac, Linux, and even some VDI like Citrix.