As Kaspersky research shows, dedicated protection for Linux servers is essential, no matter if they are on-premise or in the cloud. Advanced threats for Linux can be no less severe than for other operating systems, with such servers often hosting critical applications or becoming a springboard for access to endpoints on Windows and iOS.

Compromised servers can go unnoticed for a long time. Protection from ransomware attacks is also critical to avoid disruption and financial loses. For example, in summer 2020, a large vendor of solutions for digital workspaces and the professional print industry, became a victim of one such Linux executable, RansomEXX, leading to an outage of company services.

To combat these types of threats, the updated Kaspersky product has a newly added application control for Linux workloads, helping businesses effectively prevent the launch of unauthorized or unknown (and potentially dangerous) executables. A customer can now set up application launch policies according to security requirements, for example, create a list of applications prohibited from launching. In the Default Deny scenario, only applications from the approved list can be launched in the workload. Administrators can also configure policies for separate machines or groups of machines.

The new executable software inventory feature creates a list of all used application executables by path, hash, and type, so it can be used to create and assign categories and as a preparation stage for application control set up.

Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Linux also improves protection for DevOps to help customers add security practices into the product development lifecycle. The product can now scan containers and images in more containerization environments, in addition to Docker: Cri-O, Podman and runC – to reveal compromised assets.

For Docker users, product deployment and configuration has become easier and faster. Customers can now run Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Linux as a container in the very environment they want to protect. The service of on-demand scan (ODS) is enabled via RESTful API.

This new release also provides updates for security administration now that the SaaS version of Kaspersky Security Center console is available for managing workload security in public clouds: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. It is hosted and maintained by Kaspersky, saving customers time and resources for deployment.

Details of all Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Linux features are available here (PDF). For more information about Kaspersky Hybrid Cloud Security and applications, please follow the link.