Open Source Endpoint Security Solutions
There are several open-source endpoint security solutions available, which may be a viable alternative to commercial software; and suitable for small business and enterprises.
When used holistically, they offer a viable solution and provide functionality for malware detection: system monitoring; and, intrusion detection and prevention.
The fact they are open-source also allows them to tailored to specific needs or repurposed. The following are some of the tools worth considering.
- ClamAV – which is an antivirus engine for detecting trojans, viruses, malware, and other malicious threats.
- OSSEC – which is a Host Intrusion Detection System (HIDS) for performing log analysis, file integrity checking, policy monitoring, rootkit detection, real-time alerting and active response.
- Wazuh – which is a fork of OSSEC and extends its functionalities with more advanced features like security analytics, compliance monitoring and cloud-native integration.
- Snort – which is a network intrusion detection system (NIDS and can be used at the endpoint level for monitoring network traffic and analyzing it for signs of intrusion.
- Security Onion – which is a Linux distribution for intrusion detection, network security monitoring and log management. It uses a collection of tools (e.g., Snort, Suricata, Zeek, Wazuh and others) to create a complete security monitoring platform.
- OpenSCAP – which is an auditing tool that provides a framework for maintaining compliance with security standards like the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP). It is particularly useful for system hardening and vulnerability management which are important for endpoint security.
- SELinux – (Security-Enhanced Linux) is a set of kernel modifications and tools for enforcing security policies on Linux, and provides an additional layer of control over what processes can access and do.
Even though open-source software has significant benefits, given the rate of improvement of security threats and the sophistication of threat-actors, care should be taken with the use of open-source tools – as they are often left un-updated and not actively maintained.
It is also possible they may have malicious code embedded within them, or known exploits which haven’t been patched.
As such, a certain level of technical expertise is needed to integrate or modify them. Still they provide a solid starting point in building out a custom solution.