# Red Hat Preps Two Secure RHEL Updates for the AI Era > Source: > Published: 2026-11-09 16:43:09+00:00 Red Hat today at the [KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2026](https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kubecon-cloudnativecon-north-america/) conference announced it will make available a pair of updates to its distribution of Linux that promise to make it simpler to securely deploy workloads in a way that can also be managed by artificial intelligence (AI) agents. Version 9.9 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) makes a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server generally available that will provide access to historical performance data collected by the Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) tool. Additionally, Red Hat is previewing a self-managed command-line AI assistant that can now be deployed in on-premises IT environments. Red Hat is also simultaneously preparing to roll out a 10.3 update that adds sealed images for image mode and post-quantum cryptography (PQC) support in Go’s Transport Layer Security (TLS) implementation. Finally, Red Hat is adding support for the latest editions of Rust, Node.js, Go and .NET. Raj Das, general manager for RHEL, said the MCP server makes it possible for AI agents to securely manage instances of RHEL, while sealed images ensure that the RHEL kernel refuses to run any tampered content at runtime. The goal is to provide IT teams with an immutable platform for implementing zero-trust principles in a way that offloads security overhead from a server, he added. It’s not clear how rapidly IT teams might be upgrading Linux distributions, but as interest in AI rises, there is an opportunity to streamline the management of IT platforms. At the same time, security has become a much bigger concern in the wake of several rogue incidents involving AI agents and the discovery of a massive number of vulnerabilities that can now be more easily exploited in the AI era. The hope, of course, is that organizations will be able to lock down their IT environments before any of the vulnerabilities are exploited. Red Hat, in the meantime, is adding AI capabilities that should make it simpler for IT teams to upgrade their platforms to more secure editions of RHEL. At this juncture, it’s more a question of when most IT teams will be updating their platforms to remediate what has become thousands of vulnerabilities. Rather than trying to apply a patch to legacy platforms, the better part of valor is almost inevitably going to be updating to the latest more secure version of a platform that is, in the age of AI, becoming easier to deploy. There will, unfortunately, in all likelihood be more security incidents if for no other reason than exploits are now being created faster than either a patch or a new version of a platform becomes available. Historically, it has taken months for IT teams to apply patches or upgrade a platform. Most IT teams will need to revisit those workflows sooner than later to reduce as many of those security incidents as possible. As such, IT teams and their cybersecurity colleagues, while continuing to hope for the best, should prepare now for what might soon become the worst of IT times.