Don’t Disable SELinux – Use It to Your Advantage

Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is an access control mechanism which is inbuilt in the latest Linux distributions. It is now released for public and the various distributions have used it in their code. Over years it has been observed that most system administrators find SELinux quite confusing and so they prefer to disable SELinux rather than learning how it functions.

Need to Use SELinux in a Justified Way

Use of the correctly configured SELinux for your system, can definitely curtail the security risks. You can easily deal with the troubleshoot access and other related error messages. You need to be clear with the concepts of SELinux – the configuration, commands, packages and most importantly the error messages it shows when the access is restricted. You can easily define the function of a user or process with SELinux. As it confines all the process into its own area, it thus restricts the process of interacting with all types of files and processes, thus ensuring security and completely restricts the hacker from gaining access to the entire system.

IPsec and SELinux

The two packages are not always integrated with all the distributions. For a few it is integrated like Red Hat ES and Fedora, whereas for some it is an add-in-package. Red Hat has built-in SELinux with a well-designed policy along with IPsec functionality. Debian, Gentoo and SuSE are also other distributions of SELinux and IPsec. Both of them provide completely different functionality. IPsec is an array of protocols which allows secure transaction of packets basically at IP stratum. It allows a much secured communication between networks and hosts and allows the use of VPNs. On the other hand SELinux is a security enrichment that is integrated into the kernel, thus enabling mandatory access controls. It helps you to write policies on processes, segregate information, integrity requirements and many more.

So take out some time and enroll for Linux training in Hyderabad to resolve issues rather than disabling the SELinux. You can use it for your benefit if you leave the protection tool in place.