---
title: Security RX for Infrastructure
source: https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/vulnerability-management/infrastructure/overview
---

Security RX for Infrastructure helps you identify, prioritize, and remediate vulnerabilities in your infrastructure hosts, operating systems, and installed packages. Monitor security across your entire infrastructure fleet or drill down into specific hosts to understand their security posture.

## What you can do

With Security RX for Infrastructure, you can:

-   **Detect vulnerabilities** in OS distributions and installed packages automatically through Infrastructure agents
-   **Track package versions** and identify outdated components across your fleet
-   **Monitor host-level security** with entity-scoped views
-   **Manage infrastructure security** organization-wide with comprehensive dashboards
-   **View upgrade recommendations** for vulnerable packages and distributions

## How to get started

Before using Security RX for Infrastructure, make sure you have:

1.  **[Set up prerequisites and user roles](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/vulnerability-management/getting-started/prerequisites)** - Ensure you have the required permissions
2.  **[Installed the Infrastructure agent](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/vulnerability-management/getting-started/integrations/overview#supported-os-distributions-and-package-managers)** - Deploy agents to your hosts
3.  **Verified your OS is supported** - Check the list of supported Linux distributions below

## Choose your workflow

Security RX provides two complementary views for managing infrastructure vulnerabilities:

### Organization view: Manage all infrastructure

Best for security teams, DevSecOps, and platform engineers who need to:

-   Calculate the vulnerability surface area across all hosts
-   Identify which hosts and packages pose the highest risk
-   Track OS distributions and package versions in use
-   Monitor security hygiene metrics infrastructure-wide

**→ [Manage infrastructure vulnerabilities](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/vulnerability-management/infrastructure/manage-infrastructure-vulnerabilities)**

### Entity view: Monitor specific hosts

Best for site reliability engineers, system administrators, and infrastructure teams who need to:

-   Monitor vulnerabilities in specific hosts
-   Track package vulnerabilities and available upgrades
-   View security summaries for individual infrastructure entities
-   Integrate security tasks into infrastructure maintenance workflows

**→ [Monitor host-level security](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/vulnerability-management/infrastructure/monitor-host-security)**

## Supported operating systems

Security RX for Infrastructure supports the following Linux distributions:

| OS Distribution                                                                                         | Package Manager | Detection Coverage |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------- | ------------------ |
| ![Debian](https://docs.newrelic.com/images/os_icon_debian.webp "Debian") Debian                         | DPKG            | Installed packages |
| ![Ubuntu](https://docs.newrelic.com/images/os_icon_ubuntu.webp "Ubuntu") Ubuntu                         | DPKG            | Installed packages |
| ![Amazon Linux](https://docs.newrelic.com/images/os_icon_amazon-linux.webp "Amazon Linux") Amazon Linux | RPM             | Installed packages |
| ![CentOS](https://docs.newrelic.com/images/os_icon_centos.webp "CentOS") CentOS                         | RPM             | Installed packages |
| ![RHEL](https://docs.newrelic.com/images/os_icon_redhat.webp "RHEL") RHEL & Oracle Linux                | RPM             | Installed packages |
| ![SLES](https://docs.newrelic.com/images/os_icon_suse.webp "SLES") SLES                                 | RPM             | Installed packages |

For complete requirements and setup instructions, see [Infrastructure agent integration](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/vulnerability-management/getting-started/integrations/overview#supported-os-distributions-and-package-managers).

## Data sources

Security RX for Infrastructure collects vulnerability data from:

-   **Infrastructure agents** - Automatic detection of vulnerabilities in OS packages and distributions
-   **Package inventory** - Real-time tracking of installed packages and versions
-   **CVE databases** - Continuous monitoring of known vulnerabilities affecting your OS distributions

Learn more about [configuring the Infrastructure agent](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/vulnerability-management/getting-started/integrations/overview).

## Key differences from application security

Infrastructure vulnerability management focuses on:

-   **Operating system vulnerabilities** - CVEs in the OS itself
-   **System packages** - Vulnerabilities in installed system-level packages
-   **Package managers** - RPM and DPKG managed components
-   **Host-level security** - Security posture of individual servers and containers

This complements Security RX for Applications, which focuses on application-level dependencies and libraries.

## What's next?

[Manage infrastructure vulnerabilities](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/vulnerability-management/infrastructure/manage-infrastructure-vulnerabilities)

View vulnerability surface area across all hosts

[Monitor host security](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/vulnerability-management/infrastructure/monitor-host-security)

Track vulnerabilities in a specific host

[Set up alerts](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/vulnerability-management/advanced/set-up-alerts)

Get notified when new vulnerabilities are detected

[Manage vulnerability status](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/vulnerability-management/advanced/manage-vulnerability-status)

Change status to Ignored, Affected, or Fixed