Subscription Security: Ubuntu Pro is now available to the general public

Ubuntu Pro is now generally available. It is designed to help teams obtain timely patches for CVE vulnerabilities and keep their systems secure and compliant with standards and certifications such as FedRAMP, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS. Until now, the subscription was only available as a trial or for large cloud customers.

It’s a subscription model from Canonical, which adds 10 years of security coverage and optional tech support to an additional 23,000 packages beyond the base operating system. It’s for companies that want to improve their IT security, not just for the main Ubuntu repository, but for thousands of open source packages and toolchains.

Ubuntu Pro: Fast Security Updates

Canonical wants to respond especially quickly to security vulnerabilities and provide patches for the main Ubuntu software. Critical vulnerabilities and other security risks are patched in less than 24 hours on average. Ubuntu Pro provides CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Vulnerability Entries) from Ansible, Apache Tomcat, Apache Zookeeper, Docker, Nagios, Node.js, phpMyAdmin, Puppet, PowerDNS, Python, Redis, Rust, WordPress, and more, Canonical explains.

In addition to security patches, Ubuntu Pro also provides tools to manage compliance in regulated and audited environments. For example, the Ubuntu Security Guide (USG) helps implement hardening and compliance standards such as the CIS standard and DISA-STIG profiles. To meet compliance regulations such as FedRAMP, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS, Ubuntu Pro also offers FIPS-certified encryption packages.

Landscape mode is used for overall system management and automated patching. In addition, Ubuntu Pro supports Livepatch, which allows patching of kernel memory vulnerabilities at runtime, reducing the need for a reboot.

Ubuntu Pro is available for any Ubuntu LTS from 16.04 LTS. It is already in production running for major clients providing services around the world. Tens of thousands of users have already signed up for the beta, which has been available since October 2022.

different versions

For Ubuntu Pro, Canonical estimates $25 per year for workstations or $500 per year for servers; The standard subscription covers security updates for all packages in the Ubuntu Main and Universe repositories. It is also available on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud public cloud partner marketplaces. It is billed on an hourly basis directly with the cloud services provider and is about 3.5 percent of the average basic computing costs.

A slimmer version is available as an Ubuntu Pro (Infra-only) subscription and is suitable for bare metal deployments. Supports the underlying operating system as well as private cloud components. According to Canoncial, it is suitable for companies that build private clouds that use other guest operating systems for applications. $225 per server due.

Optional 24-7-Full-Support for Ubuntu-Betriebssystem, MAAS, LXD, Kubernetes, OpenStack or Ceph-Storage and for eine Reihe ungenannter Open-Source-Anwendungen costet je Desktop 300 US-Dollar and for Server 3.400 US-Dollar annually. If you can do without weekend support, you only pay half.

Home and small business users can use Ubuntu Pro on up to five computers for free. Official members of the Ubuntu community are allowed to use it on 50 computers. All you need to do is sign in to your Ubuntu One account or create a free account and you will receive a code that you can use to activate Ubuntu Pro.