It’s really quite alarming how cybercriminals are operating now. In June 2019, NASA reported a breach wherein mission data to Mars were stolen. Meanwhile, the American Medical Collection Agency has admitted that more than 20 million Americans had their personal and financial data stolen.

We are going to see more and more stories like these if trends continue. An estimated 35,277 cybersecurity incidents happened at federal agencies in 2017 alone. In 2018, cybercrimes cost the American economy around $57 billion to $109 billion dollars.

What can these agencies, as well as private enterprises, do to secure their data centers and cloud environments?

Enter Oracle Linux

The first step is to switch to Oracle Linux. The company has been improving its Linux offering, adding more technologies and features to help fight cyber threats and improve security. This claim is not baseless.

The platform is now Common Criteria certified. Oracle Linux 7 is now validated by FIPS 140-2. It is also the only Linux distribution that is compliant with the National Information Assurance Partnership. The NIAP listing certifies that Oracle Linux complies with security requirements set forth by the organization.

What you can get from Oracle Linux

So, when it comes to security, what does Oracle Linux have that other distributions should copy? For one, Oracle Linux is the only platform that allows you to patch hypervisor, kernel, and other critical packages without taking the system offline. You can use Ksplice to do this.

Ksplice also debuted a new feature that can determine if there are attempts to exploit vulnerabilities in different kernels. So, if you have kernels that have been patched in memory, this new functionality will alert you if a malicious code is executed on the server.

Kata Containers and other services

Then you can also benefit from Kata Containers, which will protect microservices.   These containers can improve security using virtual machine isolation.

In line with this, the company is also improving on large seccomp filters. These filters help to restrict the capabilities of containers, thereby facilitating isolation. It used to be that these filters are too slow to be of any use for large whitelists.

More than these developments, plans are underway for a QEMU-based hypervisor. According to Oracle, these hypervisors will be able to secure and isolate virtual hardware that has virtual instances.

Data encryption

Data encryption is very important in securing your systems and cloud environment. Your data should always be encrypted whether it’s in storage, or while being transmitted on your network. One of the company’s developers, Chuck Lever, is very active in the development of standards that will require enterprises to secure their NFS from end to end, even when it’s being transmitted.

Call Four Cornerstone today!

If you are looking to benefit from Oracle Linux and its technologies, then you should call and let us be your partner of in installing and then switching over to Oracle Linux. As you can see, Oracle has been doing a lot to make their offerings inherently secure.

We are here to help! Call us at +1 (817) 377-1144.