How Red Hat’s Linux Update Affects HIT Infrastructure, Security
The latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux update addresses security, performance, and management concerns organizations have while digitizing their HIT infrastructure.
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By - Red Hat announced the availability of its latest version of its Linux platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4. The updated platform simplifies complex IT tasks, and supports physical servers, virtual machines, and public and private cloud deployments as well as addresses HIT infrastructure security, performance, and management concerns.
The updated platform features automated capabilities for complex environments and provides a flexible operating system backbone to address vital enterprise needs.
Linux 7.4 serves organizations by connecting physical servers, cloud deployments, containers, and virtual machines. It also pairs the progressive innovation of open source technology with the stability of enterprise infrastructure to support digital transformation.
“The modern enterprise will not be solely based in physical servers or cloud services; rather, the path to digital transformation weaves across four distinct technology footprints,” Red Hat Platform Business Unit Vice President and General Manager Jim Totton said in a statement. “The latest version of the Linux platform supports each of these deployment methodologies with new security features, improved performance and introduces new automation capabilities to cut through the inherent complexities of heterogeneous datacenters.”
Linux 7.4 updates its previous security features to meet the evolving needs of enterprise level customers. Organizations are generally no longer looking for security tools that will only allow them to react to security breaches and threats.
Enterprises, especially healthcare organizations, are looking for a more proactive approach to security that will better protect their data.
The security updates to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 include the following:
- Updated audit capabilities to help simplify how administrators filter the events logged by the audit system, gather more information from critical events, and to interpret large numbers of records.
- USB Guard: a feature that allows for greater control over how plug-and-play devices can be used by specific users to help limit both data leaks and data injection.
- Enhanced container security functionality with full support for using SELinux with OverlayFS that helps secure the underlying file system and provides the ability to use docker and use namespaces together for fine-grained access control.
Organizations are constantly adding applications to their health IT infrastructures, which can strain operating systems and hardware that are not meant to handle them. The update addresses these performance issues and supports modernized infrastructure by improving storage and networking.
Performance upgrades include:
- Support for NVMe Over Fabric helps to provide customers with increased flexibility and reduced overhead when accessing high performance NVMe storage devices located in the data center on both Ethernet or Infiniband fabric infrastructures.
- General enhancements to Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s performance when deployed on the public cloud, highlighted by decreased boot times to better enable mission-critical applications to start sooner, and support for the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enable new network capabilities.
Management and automation are two other demands the updated platform means to address. Organizations are faced with managing their digitized infrastructure, which can be increasingly complicated. Adding automation to management allows IT administrators to set certain tasks so they can focus on more involved projects.
The Linux 7.4 update addresses the increasing complexity of system management by giving users access to a technology preview of Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Roles. The upcoming solution will provide a common management interface across all major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
System Roles will allow organizations to automate workflow across their infrastructure, making it easier to manage.
The update also includes improving containers for better application management. The containers better secure apps, support faster development, and increase flexibility in managing application lifecycles.
The updates to Red Hat Enterprise Linux address many of the demands organizations have while they continue to digitize their IT infrastructures. Security, management, and performance all need to evolve with the advanced tools organizations are deploying.
