Ubuntu is a very popular operating system (OS) in the cloud space but the Federal government has been reluctant to adopt Ubuntu, preferring to stick with Redhat as their Linux flavor of choice. As the Government moves toward the cloud it makes sense to me that Ubuntu would start to see some more play time. One of the big hurdles to this is the need to ensure that Ubuntu meets the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) security guidelines. Now, thanks to the folks over at @18F this has become a reality. 18F has made available, on their github page, a set of scripts to harden an Ubuntu AMI.
According to their README.md:
This project creates hardened, FISMA Ready Ubuntu LTS Amazon Machine Instances (AMIs) that are suitable for use in Amazon Web Services (AWS).
This is great news for Open Source and another example of some of the great stuff that is going on over at 18F.
