this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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Reproducing a Microsoft corporate environment on Linux. (lemmy.ca)
submitted 7 months ago by cyborganism@lemmy.ca to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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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.

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[–] AlexanderESmith@kbin.social 20 points 7 months ago (18 children)

In no particular order;

  • Detecting "installed" software is iffy. Linux can have all kinds of things running on it that aren't "installed" as-such (same as Windows with portable EXEs, Linux has AppImage/etc). Excepting things like that, you can detect installed apps through the package managers (apt/pkg/yum/snap/etc).
  • OS updates in Debian-likes and Redhat-likes are controllable out of the box, but I'm not familiar with a way to prevent a user from doing them (other than denying them root access, which might make it hard for them to use the system, depending on what they need to do).
  • I've had a lot of good results with OpenVPN.
  • lol antivirus. Not saying Linux doesn't get viruses, or that there arent antiviruses for Linux, but the best way to avoid getting them is still to just avoiding stupid shit. Best thing I can offer is that if you have some kind of centralized storage, check that for compromised files frequently, and keep excellent backups. And make sure your firewalls and ACLs don't suck.
[–] pixxelkick@lemmy.world 25 points 7 months ago (3 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.

[–] rho50@lemmy.nz 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.

[–] MrPoopyButthole@lemmy.world 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.

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