Improve security and compliance with Linux

As one of the most popular operating systems (OSes), Linux® provides an ideal platform for modern IT landscapes. It is the standard for highly available, reliable, and critical workloads in datacenters and cloud computing environments, supporting a variety of use cases, target systems, and devices. Many major public cloud providers offer multiple Linux distributions within their marketplaces.

Even so, the specific Linux distribution and management tools an organization chooses can greatly affect the efficiency, security, and interoperability of its IT environment. This e-book provides effective security management approaches, key integrated tool features and recommendations, and guidance on managing security vulnerabilities and compliance risks within Linux environments.

AI brings new concerns 

Managing IT security and compliance is an ongoing challenge for many organizations. “Globally, 1 in 5 organizations has experienced a significant cyber incident within the past 2 years. These events are costly with the global average cost of a data breach being US$4.44 million.” The rise of AI has introduced new threats and added complexities to the security landscape. Specifically, the use of unsanctioned AI tools used by employees outside of IT oversight, known as “shadow AI”, introduced a new major threat. “Breaches involving shadow AI added an average of US$670,000 to the [total] bill—a 15% increase [over standard breach costs].”¹

Avoid the consequence of ineffective security 

Speed is essential in reducing the risk and impact of breaches. The faster an organization can identify a potential threat, the lower the financial and operational fallout. Recent benchmarks illustrate the typical consequences of ineffective security incidents:¹

• US$4.4M average total cost of a data breach in 2025 .
• 241 days the mean average time to identify and contain a data breach in 2025.
• 97% of organizations that reported an AI-related security incident lacked proper AI access controls. 

3 common security challenges

Several factors complicate modern security vulnerability and compliance management:¹

Changing security and compliance landscapes 

Teams are no longer just managing devices; they’re struggling to govern sanctioned AI models while simultaneously defending against shadow AI tools. 

•  20% of breaches are caused by security incidents involving shadow AI.

When data is stored across multiple environments, it becomes significantly harder to protect. This complexity makes it more difficult for security teams to identify and contain a breach compared to data stored in a single environment.

• 30% of breaches now involve data stored across multiple environments.

The complexity premium 

Large infrastructures often incorporate multiple security and compliance tools, which can complicate risk management operations.

• Data breaches involving multiple environments are now the most common and the most expensive, costing an average of US$5.05 million per incident—slightly higher than breaches occurring solely on premise.

Staffing challenges

Most organizations lack the staff headcount required to manage security and compliance tasks manually. Additionally, the rise of remote work has increased the burden of safeguarding devices and access points to an organization’s digital assets.

• 63% of organizations lack the governance policies necessary to manage AI, largely because they don't have the staff to create and enforce them.

Security and compliance management is a continuous, risk-based discipline. It helps organizations strengthen their security posture while meeting regulatory and business requirements across increasingly complex environments. A modern approach helps teams establish consistent, repeatable, and auditable practices across their entire IT estate—on premise, cloud, and hybrid infrastructures—so they can:

Assess

Continuously identify noncompliant or vulnerable systems. Evaluate the security state of the organization’s entire environment, from infrastructure to workload, to determine which security advisories actually apply to specific systems. 

Prioritize 

Prioritize remediation efforts based on risk, impact, and operational effort, with support of verified automation and AI-driven tools. Use risk management techniques to understand the business impact of each issue and plan remediation efforts accordingly. For example, a vulnerability on a development system may pose minimal risk, while the same issue on a production workload requires immediate attention.

Remediate 

Patch and reconfigure systems quickly. Automating remediation processes ensures consistency across systems and reduces the risk of human error. When applied effectively, automated tools speed up remediation to protect the business and its data.

Report 

Continuously validate that changes were applied and automate reporting to streamline audits. Clear, role-appropriate reporting delivers the right level of insight for executives, auditors, and technical teams to understand current security posture and risk exposure over time. By combining continuous validation with automated, auditable reporting, organizations can move beyond reactive security practices to support modern operating models such as DevSecOps, where speed, consistency, and governance must coexist. 

Vulnerability identification and remediation is the process of evaluating infrastructure to find and fix systems that are susceptible to attack. These vulnerabilities can be caused by emerging threats, outdated or missing patches, or system misconfigurations. Remediation usually includes patching, updating, and reconfiguring systems to resolve the underlying risk. 

Why is vulnerability identification important? 

Security vulnerabilities can lead to costly breaches that can damage customer trust, company reputation, and revenue. In fact, “attackers targeted customer personally identifiable information (PII) over other types of data by a wide margin. At 53%, it was the most stolen or compromised data type.”¹ This remains the most targeted data type because of its high value for identity theft and fraud.

Challenges to effective vulnerability identification and remediation 

Most organizations lack a consistent security strategy for operations at scale, a gap further widened by the rapid, unmanaged adoption of AI tools and workloads. Key obstacles include:

• Skills and resource gaps: As AI environments expand, limited staff are overwhelmed and may lack the skills required to develop and execute a comprehensive security strategy.
• Alert fatigue: Generic security scanning tools generate massive lists of potential vulnerabilities. Because many are not applicable to a specific environment, staff must spend more time investigating relevant risks..
• Manual bottlenecks: Manual identification, remediation, and tracking processes slow down operations, leaving known vulnerabilities unpatched for extended periods.
• Inconsistent remediation: Ad hoc remediation methods lead to inconsistent application of patches and the risk of increased security breaches across the entire infrastructure.

Key security management tool features 

To be effective, organizations must be able to rapidly identify and resolve system vulnerabilities before they result in a breach. When evaluating unified security management tools, look for these key features: 

• Systems analysis to identify risks at both the operating system (OS) and workload levels in systems and instances across any environment.
• Automated remediation to identify risks with increased speed, accuracy, and efficiency for IT and security teams.
• Incorporate vendor expertise to provide remediation guidance for their products to ensure fixes are verified.
• Regularly access the latest data about known vulnerabilities and security risks from the organization’s OS and application providers.
• Generate audit-ready reports with appropriate levels of detail for executives, auditors, and technical teams.

Read this PeerSpot report² to discover how even the best IT departments can benefit from using Red Hat® Satellite solutions for improving infrastructure management and security. 

Compliance management is the process of ensuring systems are compliant with corporate policies, industry standards, and applicable regulations over time. It involves infrastructure assessment to identify systems that are noncompliant due to regulatory and policy changes, misconfiguration, or other internal standards. 

Why is compliance management important? 

Beyond increasing the risk of security breaches, noncompliance with applicable regulations can lead to significant fines, damage to business reputation, and the loss of necessary certifications. Regulatory compliance failures add to the average cost of a data breach by US$173,692.¹

Challenges to effective compliance management 

Many organizations rely on manual operations and custom scripts—methods that are slow and limited in scale for fast-paced technology development and business operations. However:

• A multitude of generic standards and baselines makes it difficult to determine which requirements are relevant to a specific environment. 

• Manual processes slow compliance monitoring, remediation, and auditing operations, which leads to inefficient use of staff time, inconsistent policy application, and further risk of compliance issues. 

• Separate tools for security and compliance management can result in lower operational efficiency, making it laborious to set up consistent and custom policies. 

Key compliance management tool features 

To be effective, organizations need to define and apply contextual policies to maintain system integrity and generate audit-ready reports in less time. When evaluating unified compliance management tools, look for tools that:

• Use analytic features to consistently identify compliance risks in a time-efficient manner.
• Remediate noncompliant systems automatically.
• Provide a complete view of current compliance posture across multiple environments.
• Generate automated compliance reports according to auditing requirements and audience needs.
• Deliver expert advice and contextual guidance for remediating noncompliant systems across multiple environments.

The next chapter explores best practices for managing security and compliance risk more effectively in dynamic enterprise environments.

Analyze systems regularly 

Daily monitoring helps organizations identify vulnerability and compliance risks before they interrupt business operations or result in a breach. Use the latest security data from the OS and application vendors to improve analysis accuracy, and establish custom security policies tailored to a specific environment.

• For vulnerabilities listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerability (KEV) catalog, the median time for an attacker to begin mass exploitation is only 5 days.³

Patch often and test thoroughly

Keeping systems up to date improves security, reliability, performance, and compliance. While general patches should be applied regularly, critical bugs and defects require immediate attention. Test patched systems for acceptance before returning them back into production.

Deploy automation and approved AI tools 

As the organization’s infrastructure grows, it becomes harder to manage manually. Use automation and AI-driven tools to streamline monitoring, speed remediation, and ensure consistent reporting.

• Security teams using AI and automation extensively shortened their breach times by 80 days and lowered their average breach costs by US$1.9 million compared to organizations that didn’t use these solutions.¹ 

Connect tools and align processes 

Integrate disparate platform management tools via application programming interfaces (APIs) to maintain visibility across distributed environments. Reducing the number of interfaces simplifies operations and ensures a more consistent, reliable security posture.

• Security system complexity adds an average of US$207,914 to the cost of a breach.¹

Adopt a consistent, continuous security strategy 

Effective security demands a holistic approach that aligns people, processes, and technology. A defense-in-depth strategy maximizes protection by applying security controls across all layers, including OSes, container platforms, automation and AI tools, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, and cloud services.

• 63% of organizations lack a formal AI governance policy, which directly contributes to higher breach costs.¹

Understanding the needs of an organization’s security and compliance posture at any moment is the first step to improvement. Ideal security and compliance tools will include several key features and capabilities: 

• Proactive analysis: Tools that provide proactive, automated analysis can ensure systems are monitored at regular intervals, providing alerts to issues without requiring constant manual oversight.
• Prioritized response: Tools should provide prescriptive remediation steps and prioritize actions based on potential impact, allowing teams to make the most of limited patching windows.
• Customizable results: To reduce false positives, look for tools that allow organizational IT leaders to define business context, ensuring checks only apply to relevant systems and workloads. Some vulnerability and compliance checks may not apply to certain systems due to their use, configuration, or workload.
• Intuitive reporting: Tools that generate clear, intuitive reports for multiple audiences regarding patch status and policy compliance improve auditability and stakeholder alignment.
• Unified interface: Tools that manage multiple layers of the IT environment can simplify security operations and provide a better understanding of the current security and compliance posture. Unified tools can also provide increased context for scans and remediation guidance.
• Actionable insight: Tools that provide information tailored to the IT environment can help quickly identify affected systems, and the potential impact of a vulnerability, helping organizations prioritize and plan remediation actions.

Red Hat takes a holistic, proactive approach to security and compliance risk management, improving speed, scalability, and stability across the entire IT environment, from bare-metal and virtualized servers to private, public, hybrid cloud, and edge deployments. By aligning people, processes, and technology, Red Hat® platforms help organizations achieve operational efficiency, boost innovation, and improve employee satisfaction. 

At the core of this strategy is Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a consistent, intelligent operating foundation for modern IT. This consistency across infrastructure allows IT teams to deploy applications, workloads, and services using the same tools, regardless of location. 

Security is a key part of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux architecture and lifecycle. Multilayered breach defenses use automated, repeatable security controls to mitigate exposure to vulnerabilities while critical security upgrades and live patches—included as part of a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription—helps keep the IT environment protected without downtime.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is enhanced by integrated management tools and AI-powered insights that provide a holistic view for managing security and compliance across hybrid environments. Organizations can benefit from: 

• Reduced alert fatigue: Reduce false positives with configurable tools and baselines to provide an accurate view of IT current infrastructure status.
• Proactive remediation: Improve configuration and patching accuracy with automation and reduce human errors, without needing to contact support.
• Comprehensive visibility: Use vulnerability and malware detection capabilities to scan systems for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) and malware signatures while customizable views deliver the right data to the right audience at the right time and speed.
• Streamlined integration: Take advantage of on-site and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) deployment options, along with APIs, to help ensure Red Hat Enterprise Linux connects smoothly with existing security, compliance, and management tools and interfaces. This streamlined integration is supported by an extensive library of resources providing detailed, targeted information 24x7.
• Resource optimization capabilities: Help organizational IT teams select the appropriate size of its public cloud deployments using compute, memory, and performance metrics.
• Prepared defense: Prepare for threats from future quantum computers with National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-approved, quantum-resistant algorithms and confidential computing⁵ to protect sensitive data even while in use.

Read What is confidential computing?

Red Hat management tools are built on decades of Linux development and support experience. These Red Hat tools work together to streamline IT administration, saving IT teams valuable time while ensuring the environment remains security-focused, optimized, and reliable.

Analyze, observe, and manage Red Hat systems

Red Hat provides the trusted Linux platform alongside the integrated management tools and services needed for security-focused operations and innovation.

• Red Hat Lightspeed: Included with the subscription and delivered as a service, Red Hat Lightspeed (formerly Red Hat Insights) continuously analyzes platforms and applications to predict risk, recommend actions, and track costs. It allows organizations to monitor IT efficiency, stability, and performance while managing security and compliance risk across hybrid cloud environments.

Learn more about Red Hat Lightspeed

Streamline and automate system management

Adopting effective automated management approaches and tools is essential for protecting an organization.

• Red Hat Satellite: The platform provides digitally sovereign and agentic Red Hat Enterprise Linux management. The management tool provision can be configured to Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems in minutes, extending Red Hat's security-focused supply chain through content and patch management in air-gapped environments, and consistently monitored for compliance. Integrated analytics help IT security teams preemptively identify issues and receive remediation recommendations, with the option to automate fixes at scale.

Learn more about Red Hat Satellite

Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (Zoom) is a global communications technology company⁶, innovating since 2011. Beginning as a video communication solution, it has grown to offer much more, such as Zoom for Government. To comply with the rigorous security mandates of the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and the Department of Defense (DoD), Zoom operates its platform using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The company also relies on Red Hat Ansible® Automation Platform and Red Hat Satellite for infrastructure automation, ensuring compliance functions, and managing deployments.

Zoom for Government relies on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other Red Hat tools to ensure the regular adjudication process runs smoothly, with Red Hat involved in almost every step of the process. Zak Peirce, Head of Data Center Operations at Zoom, had no doubt about using Red Hat solutions. “I’ve always been a Red Hat guy,” said Peirce. “I’d choose Red Hat as my enterprise platform of choice to run a solid enterprise system.” 

Peirce went on to share why he finds the entire ecosystem useful. “I know that when I update IdM, it’s going to work with my Red Hat systems. I know that when I update the System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) agent, it’s going to work. And then the ability to use Red Hat Satellite to host those packages, keep my systems up to date, and manage the exact packages that go onto my systems helps me test my systems and make sure that the development stage and production are the same. All the pieces help us to run our operation.”

The resources on the Red Hat website, including the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database and the Red Hat security advisory (RHSA), are invaluable when working with the U.S. Government. 

Businesses rely on the stability and reliability of its IT infrastructure and applications. Adopting a proactive approach to security vulnerability and compliance risk management is the most effective way to protect your organization’s assets. 

Red Hat provides a trusted Linux platform and integrated management tools and services needed for security-focused, high-scale operations.

Analyze organizational risk with Red Hat Lightspeed 

• Learn more about Red Hat Lightspeed
• Read this Red Hat overview⁷ to learn about how Red Hat Lightspeed can help simplify compliance and vulnerability management 

Manage at scale with Red Hat Satellite 

• Discover more about Red Hat Satellite
• Learn more about the Business Value of Red Hat Satellite⁸