Skip to main content

Your submission was sent successfully! Close

Thank you for signing up for our newsletter!
In these regular emails you will find the latest updates from Canonical and upcoming events where you can meet our team.Close

Thank you for contacting us. A member of our team will be in touch shortly. Close

  1. Blog
  2. Article

Hugo Huang
on 16 November 2021


If this is your desire, it is Ubuntu Pro’s commitment: “Ubuntu Pro will secure your Open-Source Freedom for 10 years”. Security and Freedom shouldn’t be a debate, a trade-off, even a dilemma. Security shouldn’t be your concern when you embrace Open-Source.

A 10-year commitment

Canonical backs Ubuntu Pro for 10 years, ensuring security updates are available throughout, with a guaranteed upgrade path. For example, Ubuntu 16.04 Pro will continue to get security updates until 2026. 

Ubuntu Pro automatically entitles Extended Security Maintenance (ESM). Let’s SSH into your Ubuntu Pro virtual machine. If you haven’t yet upgrade your Ubuntu LTS to Ubuntu Pro, please follow this tutorial. In less than One Minute, you will be able to get your Ubuntu Pro machine without losing any of your mission critical workloads. Once you SSH into your Ubuntu Pro, input:

You will see:

SERVICEENTITLEDSTATUSDESCRIPTION
cisyesenabledCenter for Internet Security Audit Tools
esm-appsyesenabledUA Apps: Extended Security Maintenance (ESM)
esm-infrayesenabledUA Infra: Extended Security Maintenance (ESM)

Wait a second, why are there two “ESM”?

Open Source Security

ESM-infra guarantees 10-year Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) for packages in the Main repository, which includes Canonical-supported free and open-source software. On the other hand, ESM-apps further extend “Extended Security Maintenance” to the Universe repository, which covers community-maintained free and open-source software. Suppose you want to install Node.js; let’s check if the machine pulls the package from the repo:

apt-cache policy nodejs
nodejs:
Installed: (none)
Candidate: 4.2.6~dfsg-1ubuntu4.2+esm1
Version table:
    4.2.6~dfsg-1ubuntu4.2+esm1 500
      500 https://esm.ubuntu.com/apps/ubuntu xenial-apps-security/main amd64 Packages
    4.2.6~dfsg-1ubuntu4.2 500
      500 http://us-central1.gce.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/universe amd64 Packages
      500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security/universe amd64 Packages
    4.2.6~dfsg-1ubuntu4 500
      500 http://us-central1.gce.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/universe amd64 Packages

Ubuntu Pro adds security coverage for the most important open source applications like Apache Kafka, NGINX, MongoDB, Redis and PostgreSQL.

Related posts


Aaron Whitehouse
24 November 2023

Ubuntu Explained: How to ensure security and stability in cloud instances—part 3

Cloud and server Article

Applying updates across a fleet of multiple Ubuntu instances is a balance of security and service uptime. We explore best practices to maximise stability. ...


Aaron Whitehouse
21 November 2023

Ubuntu Explained: How to ensure security and stability in cloud instances—part 2

Cloud and server Article

You probably know that it is important to apply security updates. You may not be clear how to do that. We are going to explain best practices for applying Ubuntu updates to single instances and what the built-in unattended-upgrades tool does and does not do. ...


Aaron Whitehouse
5 October 2023

Securing open source software dependencies in the public cloud

Cloud and server Article

Building stable and secure software requires understanding build systems and having a plan for vulnerabilities in your software dependencies. ...