Containers have taken the development world by storm. They’re cheap, portable, scalable, and efficient. They’ve paved the transition away from monolithic applications and helped the tech world adapt microservices that can be deployed anywhere in the world.
In fact, they’ve become so popular that 90% of global organizations will run containerized apps in production by 2026. The same study also predicts that 20% of all enterprise applications will run in containers.
As a result, containers have become a lucrative target for cybercriminals who seek to infiltrate containerized environments and carry out various malicious actions. Attacks against container infrastructure have increased over the past two years in both frequency and sophistication. Does this mean containers are less secure and require more work? Let’s take a look.
Compared to other virtualized technologies, such as virtual machines, container technology can be considered less secure in some aspects because:
The adoption of containers has made them a critical part of production infrastructure. Containers process sensitive information, such as personally identifiable information (PII), patient health information, and financial data. If these containers are not adequately secured, it can lead to a data breach, which could result in significant fines and penalties.
Plus, Disruption to container applications could result in service disruptions and financial losses for your business. It's essential to have a solid container security strategy to ensure your applications run smoothly.
One container in your production infrastructure can be exploited as an entry point into your entire IT ecosystem. Let’s review the most common security issues your organization will face when using containerized applications:
Container base images commonly contain insecure components or dependencies. If developers use a vulnerable base image to create their containers, the same vulnerabilities will live in their applications. Most container image vulnerabilities can be easily detected using a reliable container image scanner such as RapidFort’s free container registry SCA scanner.
If the host operating system is inadequately secured due to security vulnerabilities, such as an unpatched system, threat actors could gain access to all containers running on the host.
Container runtime security means using processes and tools to protect containers from security risks and vulnerabilities when moving them to the production environment. Numerous risks can emerge once the container is running. The most common are:
Containers are only as secure as the underlying network infrastructure they are running on. The following network security issues significantly impact container security:
Failure to deploy a centralized solution, such as Identity Access Management (IAM) software, to govern access to protected resources will inevitably expose containerized applications to unauthorized access.
APIs are used extensively in containerized environments to facilitate communications between containers and other resources (services or other applications). Insecure APIs can make communications susceptible to interception, impacting the security of the entire IT environment.
Containers rely heavily on many components to perform optimally. For example, a typical GitHub project contains around 700 open-source dependencies. However, keeping track of all these components can be pretty challenging, especially when identifying potential vulnerabilities that could arise.
(Related: Check out how we “eat our own dog food” by securing our own base images for product development.)
Because containers are a key element in software application development, failing to secure them properly will allow threat actors to steal data, launch DDoS attacks, or even take over your entire IT infrastructure.
Inadequate container security can severely affect an organization's reputation and financial status. Therefore, addressing container security should be a top priority for any organization that wants to survive today's complex IT threat landscape and mitigate its risk.
The best practices for achieving container security can be summarized:
Following a shift left strategy will help handle most security aspects of containers early in the development lifecycle. (Important note: Shift-left on its own is not sufficient if your teams don’t have the tools to automatically remediate vulnerabilities.) Here are the most important practices to secure your containers:
Here are the most important measures to secure the container host:
Implementing security best practices such as using strong passwords, two-factor authentication, security monitoring, and logging tools can also help detect and prevent potential security breaches.
Protecting containers at runtime was traditionally the job of security teams; however, as software development methodologies continue to advance, securing containers at runtime has become the development team's responsibility. This Shift Left practice requires incorporating security into the early phase of the SDLC.
There are some important ways to enhance container network security:
A strong Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution is the best method to regulate access to protected resources. Note that access to protected resources is not limited to users or humans. Applications, services, and other systems may also require access and should be governed by IAM according to their job duties.
Some of the best ways to enhance container API security include:
Containers are composed of many open-source and/or third-party provider dependencies. For complete visibility over all components and dependencies in your container, it is critical to create a software bill of materials (SBOM).
An SBOM is a record of all software components (e.g. code libraries and modules) that comprise software applications. It should list every container component and provide information such as:
RapidFort's Software Attack Surface Management (SASM) platform automatically generates SBOM records for your application, providing an extensive list of all software components used in your container.
Containers are a powerful technology that can help you deploy and manage applications quickly and easily. However, they also introduce new security challenges. Inadequate container security will turn those advantages into a nightmare for your business's finances and reputation.
Container security is essential to protect containers from security risks and vulnerabilities throughout the CI/CD pipeline, deployment infrastructure, and supply chain.
RapidFort Community Container images on Github provides a rich library of the most popular container images on Docker Hub. We optimize and harden them every day, and they are available to anyone for free. Check out the free resource to bolster your container security.