Linux Device Management

Landscape by Canonical is a system management and monitoring tool specifically designed for Ubuntu Linux. It allows organisations to centrally manage large deployments of Ubuntu machines, whether they are desktops, servers, or cloud instances.

Find out more about Landscape on the Canonical website.

Key Features of Landscape

• Package and Patch Management – Allowing ICT to update, install, and remove packages across multiple machines simultaneously.
• Security and Compliance – Helps enforce security policies by managing updates, configurations, and system audits.
• Monitoring and Reporting – Provides real-time system monitoring, alerts, and detailed reporting on system health and performance.

The number of attacks on organisations has grown in the past few years and ransomware attacks/virus infections now present one of the biggest risks to the university. As a result, ICT is working on reducing the likelihood that this type of attack against Imperial would succeed. A significant part of this work is improving our understanding of the risks that we face.

By managing Imperial endpoints we are able to understand the risk they present to the organisation: 

• Has security been installed?
• Is antivirus software running?
• Are the security definitions up to date?
• Having managed machines and up-to-date security patches are also a requirement of Cyber Essentials which Imperial is trying to obtain. If the University does not have this certification, the University’s ability to get funding might be impacted. 

Landscape’s only task to make sure that your device is kept up to date.

• Operating system version
• Hostname and local IP address
• System uptime
• Hardware specification
• Installed packages and their versions
• Available updates and security packages

Landscape does not collect personal information.

Landscape cannot: 

• View your browsing history
• See personal emails, documents contacts or calendar entries
• Access your passwords
• View, edit or delete data
• See the location of a device

Having up-to-date security patches are also a requirement of Cyber Essentials which Imperial is trying to obtain. If the university does not have this certification, the Universities funding will be impacted.

Puppet Enterprise is a configuration management tool built upon the premise of Desired State Configuration (DSC). 

On managed Linux devices, a set of configurations are required to ensure that machines can interact with the rest of the University network. Should these settings be changed, Puppet Enterprise is able to automatically revert them to a known working state as configured by ICT.

ICT only apply configurations required for this purpose.

Group Policy is used to apply configuration settings across Ubuntu systems, such as login screen image.

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based endpoint management solution that manages user access and simplifies applications and device management across many devices, including mobile devices, desktop computers, and virtual endpoints. 

Find out more on the Microsoft website.

When a Linux device is enrolled to Intune its device compliance is measured against a compliance policy. In future, the result of that compliance policy might dictate University resources that the device is able to access

Personal use is not restricted on devices, but you must adhere to University policy as per point 11.5 in the Conditions of Use of IT Resources.