Red Hat's Dan Walsh will be speaking on Sunday, Jan. 24 at 3 p.m. on “A Fresh Look at SELinux.” The SCALE Team caught up with him to ask him about his presentation.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: My name is Dan Walsh, I have been working for Red Hat Base Engineer team for the last 15 years in Security engineering, mainly working on process isolation technologies like SELinux and containers (Namespaces). I am now the lead of the Container/Docker team at Red Hat.
Q: You're giving a talk on “A Fresh Look at SELinux.” Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: SELinux is a misunderstood technology, in that people think it is very complicated. I will attempt to simplify what SELinux is trying to tell you. I will be explaining how to handle SELinux in different situations, and how to manage it in the enterprise. I will also talk about the importance of technologies like SELinux as people move to multi-tenant workloads like Virutalization and especially containers.
Finally their will be coloring books...
Q: Is this your first visit to SCALE? If so, what are your expectations? If not, can you give us your impressions of the event?
A: Yes, I have attended other Linux Fests around the country and I have enjoyed the experience. I have always heard great things about this event and look forward to attending.
Q: What would you like people to come away from your talk understanding?
A: I would like them to have a deeper understanding of the importance of security in depth. Too many administrators are quick to turn off security measures rather then taking the time to understand the technology. No one ever turns up the level of security until after they have been hacked and it is too late.
Q: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
A: I will be hanging out at the Red Hat and Fedora booths so if you want to talk about SELinux, Containers, Security or anything to do with Open Source please don't hesitate to stop by and say “hi.”
SCALE Team interview by Sean McCabe.