Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 offers new solution to verify the integrity of OS’s

Today at the Red Hat Summit, Red Hat Inc. announced the launch of its new operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, designed to enable enterprises to deliver a more secure computing environment at scale, whether in a hybrid cloud, public cloud, or edge network environment.

The new platform is PCI-SS and HIPAA-compliant and adds new cryptographic frameworks with support for OpenSSL, so the users can encrypt data throughout their environments.

For enterprises, the new update builds on the core capabilities of RHEL8 and adds new security and hybrid cloud capabilities so that developers can better secure their environments against the next generation of threats.

Assuring Identity with RHEL9’s integrity measurement architecture

One of the main challenges that RHEL9 aims to address is ensuring that users can trust the network infrastructure they use.

“Trust is a huge concern for security posture in enterprise IT. Security teams, CISOs and CIOs are frequently trying to understand what aspects of their technology landscape can be trusted, i.e., given access to sensitive systems and data and which should be treated as untrusted or unknown,” said Executive, VP, Products and Technologies at Red Hat, Matt Hicks.

RHEL9 addresses the challenge of trust head on with Integrity Measurement Architecture (IMA) digital hashes and signatures that enable users to verify the integrity of the operating system to verify that it hasn’t been tampered with or compromised.

The IMA can even alert security teams if an individual tries to deploy a malicious patch or misconfiguration.

“IMA works at the Linux kernel level, providing a way to verify that individual files are what they say they are and that they’re from a known and trusted source. This helps the IT organization to better detect accidental or malicious modifications to the file and operating systems, making it far easier to catch a potential issue before it leads to downtime or a data breach,” Hicks said.

A look at enterprise operating systems

The announcement comes as researchers expect the global operating systems market to slowly increase from $43.14 billion in 2021 to $48.18 billion in 2026.

Red Hat’s move to incorporate new security capabilities into its new OS is helping it to become a more competitive offering for enterprise users operating in hybrid cloud environments.

It’s also helping to differentiate it from other providers on the market, such as Oracle Linux, a free Linux operating system designed for open-cloud environments that offers automated patching capabilities. The organization also recently announced raising $10.5 billion in revenue.

Another competitor is Fedora, a free Linux distribution designed for software developers with a range of open-source languages, as well as virtual machine management capabilities, identity management and Windows domain integration.

The launch of new security features like the IMA is helping to differentiate itself from other open-source Linux distributions by offering users more secure options for managing their computing workloads.

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