Novell would like to release a Linux with security management made easy according to the news on Security Focus. They have decided to not use security modifications by the National Security Agency because of the difficulty in configuring it. They have with it AppArmor though.
According to an article on Security Focus, the latest additions to SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) have been discussed in LinuxWorld. The focus was on AppArmor.
What’s up with AppArmor?
The AppArmor will be concerned with making access a bit more restrictive. There are some applications which need root access — these applications could make changes that would affect the entire system and if you want to make sure it would not happen, AppArmor could be the way for you to restrict access.
It is said to be that it is easy to use. Aside from that your system could be protected from internal and external attacks. This would be a plus factor, especially if you think about the costs of recovering from attacks that could affect your data.
How simple is simple?
- You have a name-based access control system.
- There is a graphical user interface.
- There are predefined profiles.
- There are wizards you could use to build security profiles for third party applications.
Check it out
Novell Linux is surely geared towards the users in the enterprise. If you want something that has a robust set of open source applications, a good user interface and tools, it is definitely one to try. You might not enjoy tweaking around too much and from the looks of things, SLED could be the Linux to give you an easy transition, in case you are migrating from proprietary to open source software.
[tags]novell,linux,security,applications[/tags]