Linux Kernel Livepatch

Anyone that takes their security posture seriously applies critical and high security patches with urgency, outside their regularly scheduled patching maintenance window. This is work that impacts focus and distracts from goals and business objectives.

Livepatch reduces the unplanned work of installing Linux kernel security updates, making you more effective when managing Ubuntu systems.

Downtime is one of the major pains of every service provider, and it is unavoidable when deploying vulnerability fixes on the Linux kernel in the traditional way. That’s because the updated system needs to be rebooted, potentially disrupting Kubernetes, OpenStack, virtualized, or bare-metal workloads. Industry leaders avoid this problem and achieve high uptime by livepatching between scheduled maintenance windows.

With early and cumulative patching of kernel vulnerabilities, Livepatch helps users maintain a strong security posture, and reduces the risk of exploits.

Livepatch allows you to define your rollout policy and remain in full control of which machines will get updated and when, as well as provide updates to isolated network environments. System administrators can set a patching cut-off date and a patching delay on each machine, and uniformly secure groups of machines.

Livepatch is designed to be straightforward to set up and use, and patches are applied automatically after activation. Livepatch integrates with Canonical's web and API based Linux administration tool: Landscape.