Some great news for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, they have just received FIPS 140-2 certification for their cryptographic modules. If you are unfamiliar with FIPS it’s the The Federal Information Processing Standard. It’s a mandatory certification for US and Canadian government contracts.
According to the Ubuntu Blog:
With the new FIPS 140-2 validation, we can continue to deliver the security requirements that our government, finance, and healthcare clients trust to implement the most secure open-source software to power their infrastructure,” shares Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos, Product Manager for security.
The certified modules for Ubuntu 20.04 can be obtained through the Ubuntu Advantage subscription. You can get started with Ubuntu Advantage Essential subscriptions which include FIPS free of charge up to three machines. This would be a great way to get started. You can also find public cloud version of Ubuntu preconfigured with FIPS 140 modules on AWS and Azure.
The FIPS certification should help convince IT teams who are security aware that Ubuntu 20.04 is a Linux distro that might become your first choice for deployments.
Do you use Ubuntu server? How do you feel about this certification? Let me know on Twitter and thanks for reading.