To meet our customers where they are and relieve customer challenges in managing multiple security solutions to protect their unique range of platforms and products, we have been working to extend the richness of Microsoft Defender ATP to non-Windows platforms. Today we are excited to announce general availability of Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) for Linux!
Adding Linux into the existing selection of natively supported platforms by Microsoft Defender ATP marks an important moment for all our customers. It makes Microsoft Defender Security Center a truly unified surface for monitoring and managing security of the full spectrum of desktop and server platforms that are common across enterprise environments (Windows, Windows Server, macOS, and Linux).
Defender ATP is an enterprise product, so this news doesn’t mean the end-user program that ships with Windows is coming to Linux. Still, seeing Microsoft embracing Linux left, right, and centre is still a weird sight for someone who still hasn’t forgiven Microsoft for their role in killing any chances of BeOS catching on.
I’m still bitter over that one.
Does anyone believe in anything coming from Microsoft, after more than 30 years of shenanigans? I don’t.
> so this news doesn’t mean the end-user program that ships with Windows is coming to Linux.
Fairly sure that I wouldn’t trust microsoft to not include “upgrade to windows 10” notification nagging in the best case, or replace the linux installation with windows 10 in a worse case.
Embrace, extend, extinguish. Microsoft is Microsoft, a company with a culture of amorality
The ’90’s called. They want their anti-MS talking points back.
Those are just as valid in the 2020s as they were in 90s. Fortunately we have more choice now and Microsoft products are mainly confined to the workspace, where they can continue their downward slide into irrelevance.
Who needs MS to keep Linux safe?
No linux-user with a bit of intelligence will install this.
Janvl
“Who needs MS to keep Linux safe?
No linux-user with a bit of intelligence will install this. ”
You’re right, but Enterprise IT managers who are paid +$$$$$$ may consider it.
Any real business owner can’t rely on security through obscurity and statements like “Mac/Linux don’t get viruses” (an easily proven false statement). Then you get blindsided with “why have our client list and company passwords been leaked onto the internet?” Most businesses will need some sort of end point anti-malware regardless of whether it’s Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, etc.
You and me both, brother. I think they will continue to embrace and support Linux for exactly as long as it is profitable for them to do so. If they find they can make more money by skipping to “extinguish” mode, they will at the drop of a hat.
since there are more and more Samba file servers and also NAS appliances serving CIFS shares in the enterprise, I see this.
I honestly dont get this “us vs them” mentality. This is a tool that provides a really useful service to linux. It is part of the infrastructure and tooling that allows linux to be adopted by bigger organisations and governments. Alternatives exist, but isnt part of the point of linux to be all about having choice?
Let them hold onto their opinions formed in the 00’s. I’m entirely sure that Microsoft has come to the same conclusion as most IT people have that Linux simply can’t grow into a bigger threat than it already is. The only possible scenario I see of dethroning Microsoft from being king of the desktop is Valve partnering with Google on Fuchsia OS to develop a desktop interface.
00’s? Geez, kids. Thing is, for those who have been in IT longer than a few years and have had battleground 🙂 experience w/ ms software have gone through enough recurring ptsd therapies to not easily forgive and forget. And yes, compared to ms 10, 20, 30 years ago there have been many changes at ms, also somewhat in ideology and certainly in leadership, but those who have been around long enough can still recognize old behavior and old issues resurfacing from time to time, not necessarily only in their stance w.r.t. Linux.
The usefulness of such services will be judged in time, and I don’t think anyone is disturbed by its/their availability (I think it’s cool, although I wouldn’t use Defender). Dismissing “opinions formed in the 00’s” (i.e., of “older” people) is not fair however, IT experience is valuable, and you’ll always will regret disregarding it.
As much as it depresses me to say. I am of the age where Novell was the go-to os for enterprise
But I do think that the reflex of “M$ == bad” doesnt get us anywhere. They are producing tools, if that tool solves a need, use it, if it doesnt, dont. Dont conflate it into an ideological debate.
Microsoft itself is making this into an ideological debate by insisting on every device running a form of Windows. This has enormously backfired since the late 90s and especially the last decade with more end-user devices running non-Windows operating systems than ever before.
So now we see Microsoft embracing GNU/Linux at unprecedented scale and it isn’t doing that for altruistic motives. I don’t even think most GNU/Linux users are that persistent in their ideology and would use whatever is needed to get the job done while preferring free systems if those suffice.
I have ReactOS installed in QEMU on several machines, so I am not even opposed to the NT model of operating systems. It’s just that Windows has become increasingly user-hostile to the point it is becoming a liability to even have it installed.
So recently I wiped the SSD and installed Openindiana on it, triple booting with Debian and OpenSUSE. If I need Windows 10 again it will be installed in a virtual machine and nowhere else.
People have been trained by Microsoft’s past behavior to recognize Microsoft embrace/extend can be followed by extinguish. It has been used in a court of law and has it’s own Wikipedia article so it’s a real thing. Microsoft doing a big push to adopt Linux for a bunch of things makes Microsoft only look more scary in some way.
Some examples: is Microsoft adopting Linux by adding WSL or are they trying to prevent technical people leaving their platform for the Linux desktop (remember Ballmar’s: developers, developers, developers video). It seems they want to be at the very least leading. Look at Visual Studio Code and Github.
@l3v1
Remember when Steve Ballmer said that Linux was a cancer? I miss the zealotry days. LOL