Your submission was sent successfully! Close

  1. Blog
  2. Article

Lech Sandecki
on 19 February 2023


Businesses that require cloud computing security can gain considerable advantages by choosing an open-source platform. Open-source software (OSS) provides access to the most leading-edge enterprise-grade features while keeping costs down. OSS also eliminates risks such as vendor lock-in, lack of support, or long-term security maintenance.

However, organisations in highly regulated industries such as Government, Financial Services, Healthcare and Telecommunications are facing a challenge in archiving their unique cloud computing security requirements with OSS. With this in mind, we have designed Ubuntu Pro in the cloud.

You might have already heard about Ubuntu! Ubuntu is the world’s most popular Linux distribution and the most widely used operating system across major public clouds. Thanks to its ease-of-use, performance, and stability and the fact that each Ubuntu LTS release is benefiting from up to 5 years of standard security maintenance, Ubuntu has stayed a top choice for developers for already many years.

With Ubuntu Pro, we went a step further by extending cloud security coverage to the entire collection of software packages that ships with Ubuntu for 10 years. While also providing certified components to run across multiple compliance regimes.

Long-term cloud security and stability for thousands of applications

Security continues to be the number one concern for organizations around the world. Unexpected hacker attacks can easily bring down a system that is not well protected. For example, Software as a service (SaaS) companies that are highly reliant on the cloud need to think not only about operating level security but also cover their applications.

Therefore, Pro brings long-term support to the entire ecosystem of 30,000 deb packages available with Ubuntu. These applications can be installed directly from the Ubuntu repositories, and include popular solutions such as NGINX, MongoDB, Redis and PostgreSQL.

Alongside Ubuntu itself, each of these applications is fully security patched for high and critical CVEs for 10 years. This enables organisations to take advantage of a secure and stable open-source ecosystem with none of the usual maintenance burden! No need to worry about scanning, applying, and testing the latest upstream security updates.

This approach is ideal for companies that are embracing open source and need to maximise cloud computing security for production and mission-critical workloads.

More and more industries are coming to rely heavily on always-up-to-date development tools; and with Ubuntu Pro, development environments are constantly updated with the latest security patches.

Take the automotive industry, for example. Using Ubuntu Pro, developers working on the vehicle backend can focus on delivering new services and updates to their fleets without wasting time maintaining their development tools.

Automated FIPS compliance and cloud system hardening

Traditionally, businesses in certain industries have struggled to fully utilise Linux and other open-source platforms as they have not met strict compliance requirements. FIPS 140-2, for instance, requires crypto-modules to be rewritten and certified before the OS can be used by government agencies – a process that is both time-consuming and costly.

Pro comes with official NIST certification straight out of the box. Similarly, Ubuntu Pro supports CIS hardening and DISA STIG profiles for even greater compliance coverage, such as FedRAMP, HIPAA, PCI, ISO and more.

This empowers organisations to leverage Ubuntu across their public cloud workloads more easily. It also positions suppliers building on Ubuntu to tap into markets that were previously beyond their reach due to compliance issues.

What’s more, regulations are rapidly catching up with new technologies as they mature. For example, in the smart home space, as companies are developing new products, data privacy and security are becoming critical issues. Ubuntu Pro builds in the security updates these solutions require, allowing leaner development, and lower support and maintenance costs.

Deep public cloud integration

Pro is fully integrated with all leading public clouds: Azure, AWS and Google Cloud. Rather than needing to contract with Canonical directly, users can simply choose Ubuntu Pro as an add-on to their public cloud subscription, which is transacted directly on the cloud marketplace.

Pricing for Ubuntu Pro tracks the underlying public cloud cost, varying from 3-4.5% of an average hourly compute cost for most instances. The larger the public cloud deployment, the lower the relative cost of Ubuntu Pro!

This integration makes deploying and scaling Ubuntu Pro a highly streamlined experience and allows the service to contribute to committed cloud spend.

Ubuntu Pro is available for all recent Ubuntu LTS releases – 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS. Pro is a layer of additional services on top of the standard Ubuntu LTS, and can include optional enterprise-grade support.

Ubuntu Pro on Google Cloud

Ubuntu Pro on Azure

Ubuntu Pro on AWS

Related posts


Canonical
26 September 2023

CVE 우선순위 지정을 통한 오픈 소스 보안

Security Security

최근 연구에 따르면 엔터프라이즈 시장의 애플리케이션 중 96%가 오픈 소스 소프트웨어를 사용합니다. 오픈 소스 환경이 점점 더 세분화됨에 따라 조직에 대한 잠재적인 보안 취약점의 영향을 평가하는 작업이 엄청날 수 있습니다. 우분투는 가장 안전한 운영 체제 중 하나로 알려져 있습니다. 하지만 그 이유는 무엇일까요? 우분투 보안팀은 매일 알려진 취약점에 대해 업데이트된 소프트웨어 패키지를 수정하고 릴리스하기 때문에 ...


Alex Murray
20 July 2023

Securing open source through CVE prioritisation

Cloud and server Article

According to a recent study, 96% of applications in the enterprise market use open-source software. As the open source landscape becomes more and more fragmented, the task to assess the impact of potential security vulnerabilities for an organisation can become overwhelming. Ubuntu is known as one of the most secure operating systems, but ...


Hugo Huang
5 December 2023

How to use Ubuntu in GKE on nodes and in containers

Cloud and server Article

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) traces its roots back to Google’s development of Borg in 2004, a Google internal system managing clusters and applications. In 2014, Google introduced Kubernetes, an open-source platform based on Borg’s principles, gaining rapid popularity for automating containerized application deployment. In 2015, Google ...