What is Container Runtime Protection?
Container runtime protection provides security for containers during runtime. With the evolution of container technology, developing, deploying, and scaling applications become so easy. Even though there are inbuilt security tools present in the container, the security challenges in runtime have not gone away. There are open source tools available to protect containers from major cyber security threats and vulnerabilities.
Complete runtime container security is securing orchestration systems such as kubernetes and istio. Still there is a possibility of vulnerable containers which lead to inviting new attack vectors. So it becomes important to monitor and secure the containers.
Container Runtime Threats
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Malware installed containers, simply saying containers that are compromised.
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Misconfigured containers, e.g.: containers that run in privileged mode led to breaches.
Kubernetes Tools for Runtime Container Security
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Network Policies - Network policies can be used to control traffic around containers.
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RBAC - Without restarting the cluster, authorization policies can be fine-tuned. Role-based access control set permissions at the pod level.
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Policy Admission Control - Admission controllers help to enforce rules that address specific attack vectors.
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Secrets - Secret help to hide sensitive information like passwords.
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Audit logs - Audit logs are another Kubernetes tool for container runtime security.
Container Security Best Practices
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Harden the container daemon and the host environment.
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Ensure that images are safe by continuous vulnerability scanning.
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Secure your code and dependencies.
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Remove privileges.
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Observe the application at runtime.
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Manage secrets.
Wrapping Up
Popularity of containers is increasing day by day. It is really challenging to protect the container during runtime from cyber threats. If a threat emerges in runtime, protections in pre-production have failed. It leads to a continuous audit, scan, and to secure runtime environments against breaches. A diligent approach to runtime security can mitigate critical damages. Runtime Security is the last line of protection. Deep network visibility and protection is pivotal to runtime container security. Packet inspection offers critical insight into how applications function and communicate.
