Generative AI is reshaping software development. Developers are no longer just writing code; they're working alongside AI agents that generate, modify, and operate software. As agentic AI becomes more common, the volume of AI-generated code, dependencies, and artifacts continues to grow. The potential is significant, but so is the risk.
The challenge: Scale AI while maintaining control
To take full advantage of agentic AI–while mitigating risk–organizations need more than faster tools. They need a solution that brings consistency, control, and security to software creation across hybrid cloud environments. Teams are adapting to a new development reality. AI agents generate code and dependencies at scale, development spans local and cloud environments, and security and compliance expectations are increasing.
This shift creates a fundamental challenge: How do businesses enable developer flexibility and AI-driven innovation without compromising trust?
The answer is a trusted software factory: a centralized set of automated DevSecOps capabilities that speeds software development while incorporating security and compliance throughout the pipeline.
The solution: A trusted software factory
Trust must start before the first line of code is written. Simply adding more security scans at the end of the development process is no longer enough. Instead, the solution is two-pronged: Build trust into the agentic development lifecycle (ADLC) from the start and keep pace with AI artifacts throughout.
A trusted software factory secures AI-generated code and agents as quickly as they are created. It provides:
- A consistent experience from local development to hybrid cloud
- A standards-based build process aligned to modern supply chain security
- A governed path to production for both applications and AI agents
- The flexibility to adjust and replicate processes to meet specific needs
Trusted software factory the Red Hat way
Red Hat's trusted software factory, based on the upstream Konflux project and Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) best practices, provides a standards-based implementation that helps teams move from experimentation to repeatable, production-ready AI workflows. We deliver our software factory using a platform engineering approach, offering self-service and golden path templates to abstract away complexity. As a result, product teams receive these benefits when building and releasing products:
- Tamper-proof Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA) provenance with details of the build process
- Build-time and release-time signatures (sigstore)
- A software bill of materials (SBOM) describing the contents of the build (Trustify)
- Automated integration testing that can gate the release process
- Static application security testing (SAST), malware, and common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) scans
- Hermetic builds (Hermeto)
- Gated release of builds based on these results (Conforma)
Start with hardened images and trusted libraries
At the foundation of Red Hat's trusted software factory are Red Hat Hardened Images and trusted libraries, part of Red Hat Advanced Developer Suite. These production-ready components provide a smaller attack surface and continuous vulnerability remediation. They help developers and AI agents start from a known, trusted base. Trusted libraries, which extend security into the application layer, are curated Python packages built on SLSA Level 3 infrastructure. They include a SBOM and cryptographic signatures.
Using these components helps teams shift security left by preventing vulnerabilities from entering the pipeline early. This reduces the need for developers to vet every dependency manually. As a result, AI-generated code uses trusted building blocks by default.
You can't secure what you don't trust—and you can't trust what you don't control.
Build in guardrails: Security that scales with AI
As AI agents generate code at increasing speeds, security must be embedded directly into the development lifecycle. To help developers maintain speed while operating AI agents within governed boundaries, Red Hat's trusted software factory includes these guardrails:
- Policy-driven controls across pipelines
- Automated validation of artifacts and dependencies
- Consistent enforcement of security and compliance standards
Enforce trust everywhere: Policy as Code
A centralized policy engine helps verify that trust is continuously enforced rather than assumed. By using Policy as Code, teams can permit only approved images and trusted libraries. This approach allows them to enforce security requirements during build and deployment, preventing non-compliant artifacts from reaching production. This creates a repeatable, scalable model where every application and AI agent follows the same trusted path.
Gain full visibility with a trusted profile analyzer
As software complexity grows, visibility becomes critical. Teams must be able to answer specific questions: What's in my application? What is my risk exposure? Where did this threat come from?
Red Hat Trusted Profile Analyzer, which is part of Red Hat Advanced Developer Suite, helps teams move from reactive scanning to proactive control. It provides a comprehensive inventory of components and dependencies while offering insight into their origins. This visibility allows for continuous tracking throughout the application lifecycle.
Prioritize risk with exploit intelligence
If complexity is one challenge of modern security, noise is another. While most applications contain hundreds of vulnerabilities, only a small fraction are actually exploitable. Red Hat's exploit intelligence, developed with NVIDIA, helps teams determine if a vulnerable function is reachable at runtime. By focusing on CVEs that impact real application behavior, teams can ignore low-priority vulnerabilities that do not pose a threat.
As a result, companies can remediate high-risk issues faster and reduce operational overhead. This efficiency allows security specialists to spend more time on complex strategic tasks rather than triaging irrelevant alerts. The priority is not to fix every vulnerability but to address those that actually impact application behavior..
From local innovation to production scale
As agentic AI increases the speed and scale of software development, enterprises face the challenge of moving safely from experimentation to production. Red Hat has expanded the developer experience to support AI-driven innovation while helping teams meet consistent security standards.
Developers can work locally with Red Hat Desktop and scale to the hybrid cloud with Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces. This consistency allows teams to use the same security and governance safeguards across every environment.
Red Hat Advanced Developer Suite includes a trusted software factory, trusted libraries, and AI-driven exploit intelligence to help modernize security practices and establish trust throughout the software supply chain.
Building a foundation for agentic AI
With features like a trusted software factory, Red Hat Advanced Developer Suite helps enterprises build a foundation for secure innovation. Agentic AI changes how teams build software. Success in this new environment depends on trust as much as speed.
The Red Hat trusted software factory enforces security and compliance through Policy as Code within continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. It continuously validates every build against trusted content, signed artifacts, and hardened base images.
The trusted software factory generates and consumes SBOMs to provide visibility into software composition. It also applies exploit intelligence to prioritize remediation based on real-world risk rather than the sheer volume of findings. Intelligent rebuilds, automated patching, and pull request workflows make remediation continuous and developer-friendly. Additionally, embedded provenance, signatures, and attestation ensure every artifact is verifiable and tamper resistant.
The Red Hat trusted software factory automates security throughout the software lifecycle. Instead of asking How do we fix all these vulnerabilities?, teams can answer, How are we continuously validating and remediating risk at scale without slowing delivery? For teams that move fast–from experimentation to production–and maintain trust in the age of agentic AI, that answer is Red Hat's trusted software factory.
Last updated: May 15, 2026