The first things most people do after the installation of RedHat is to deactivate SELinux. Partly because they don't understand it. But mostly because it created problems some time ago. But since the beginning of SELinux with RHEL 4, there are some great enhancements in SELinux and most services will work out of the box.
SELinux puts an extra security layer inside Linux. Why should apache be able to read the /etc/shadow file ? Or ntpd be able to start tcpdump? This kind of things can be prohibited by SELinux. SELinux is not hard to use, but you need to understand it. This talk
will show a Linux Sysadmin what he or she needs to know, to protect the services on the Machine, without to much hazel and how to deactivate only parts of SELinux if it really gets in your way.Besides standard Linux knowhow no extra knowledge is needed.
 

Jens Kühnel is a freelancing consultant and trainer. He is collecting Linux certificates, which includes the RedHat Certified Security Specialist (RHCSS) which includes detailed knowledge of SELinux.