Tessera Desktop

A Locked-Down Linux Workstation

Name: Tessera Desktop
Brand: Tessera

A Linux desktop that carries the Tessera applications and little else. The session is confined, documents live in the Tessera Datalake, and every window shows the marking of what it displays.

Overview

A general-purpose workstation offers many ways to copy data out of its protection: a browser, a terminal, removable media, a printer. Tessera Desktop removes them. The user works with the Tessera applications, and each of them enforces the label of the document it shows.

The session is confined before the desktop starts. Every application the user runs inherits the confinement and cannot widen it. The user can write to their own files and to the datalake, and nowhere else on the machine.

Tessera Desktop uses the same key access services, identity provider and datalake as Tessera for Windows. Users and documents move between the two platforms without conversion.

Tessera Desktop with Tessera Map open. A map overlay labelled TESSERA RESTRICTED and signed by its author is shown on the map, and the dock holds the Tessera applications. — **Tessera Map on Tessera Desktop.** Map overlays are datalake documents with their own labels. The banner shows the marking of the overlay on screen and who signed it. The dock holds Tessera Office, Tessera Viewer, Tessera Browser, Tessera Map and the file manager. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Applications

Each application shows the marking of what it displays and opens only what the user is cleared for.

Tessera Office

Documents, spreadsheets and presentations, labelled and sealed on save. More

Tessera Viewer

Read-only viewing of protected documents and PDF files, with the marking on screen.

Tessera Browser

Access to approved web applications, with the marking of each page in a banner.

Tessera Map

Labelled map overlays from the datalake, drawn on a base map that works without a connection.

Tessera Datalake

The datalake as a folder in the file manager. More

Session Controls

Confined session

The whole session runs inside one confinement that no application can loosen.

No uncontrolled exits

No terminal, no general-purpose browser, no printing and no removable media. These settings are locked, not just set by default.

Separate users

Each user has private temporary storage. A file one user leaves behind is not visible to the next.

Local or remote

Use Tessera Desktop on the machine itself or reach it over remote desktop from a thin client.