Containers are beneficial in many ways from reducing complexity, ensuring continuity to adding an additional layer of security – they are truly a boon. However, without adequate security processes and controls, they can quickly become a risk.
Cloud-based containers and systems orchestrated by containers are going mainstream. With the growth of their popularity, cybercriminals are exploiting their vulnerabilities at an alarming pace. Even with the growing concerns of security, the practices to secure these systems is often overlooked.
With Containers, an application can be packaged and deployed. Services from the target environments and decoupling applications can offer various security and operational benefits. Containers also aid in running multiple concurrent services on a single system by reducing the complexity involved. This is especially effective when there are conflicting dependencies and overlapping. Due to the general nature of a container, it can even mitigate the drastic effects when there is a system-wide failure. This will buy just enough time to restore the system with minimum downtime while preventing the compromise of mission-critical application and services.
Containers run above the host operating systems on an abstract layer. Due to its abstract nature, it provides an opportunity to apply a layered defense model with a layer of separation. Even though containers are natively abstract in nature, they can be configured to run only in an isolated and trusted environment. This will enhance security and reduce vulnerabilities by effectively adding an additional barrier of separation. However, it is important to note that containers cannot be made completely safe. They are susceptible to various compromise mechanisms and vulnerabilities.
Vulnerabilities of Containers
All software that contains sensitive data and is vulnerable need to be handled carefully in order to protect that data. A container system is no different. Container systems that offer Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services can provide regular deployment of security patches on a nightly basis. However, the local administrators must always schedule downtime to apply patches and reboot nodes on a regular basis. This means that an administrator must always be monitoring the system and making necessary changes to keep it operational.
Compromised Container Images
When using third-party container images to download, it is crucial to validate all security risks beforehand to avoid any nasty surprises. External container images must be scanned by organizations for vulnerabilities when they are planning on running sensitive applications in the container. General hardening and untested policies must be tested on externally sourced containers which are running on the host operating systems. To help with the checking if image contents are changed, they must be signed digitally. These signatures must be encrypted with private keys in order to restrict them from being accessed and changed by others.
Configuration Mismanagement
Simple mismanagement in configuration can leave containers exposed. If by mistake, a user is allowed to run as a privileged elevated user on the host operating system then, they will have access to the host as well as other containers as well. This will result in a compromised system. So it is essential to maintain a sharp management team to monitor this system.
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