Rise of Docker and Application Container Security Platform – App Container vs VM
Application Container Security, or more proper term Docker Security and Container Security Platform.
When it comes to security, anything new is usually bad news, since you and your organization is not well prepare for it and legacy infrastructure and protection technology not able to handle it properly. And for most organizations, containers are something new.
That’s a concern, as containers will likely come to your organization in the near future — if they are not in use already, due to DevOps and Microservices practice. That may be in the form of Docker containers, CoreOS’s rkt-based containers, or some other type – probably more generic containers that conform to the emerging Open Container Initiative standard that’s based in Docker technology. Containers have been around since the early 2000s and architected into Linux in 2007. Because of the small footprint and portability of containers, the same hardware can support an exponentially larger number of containers than VMs, dramatically reducing infrastructure costs and enabling more apps to deploy faster. However, due to usability issues, containers did not catch on until Docker came along and made them more accessible and enterprise-ready.
Below is one of the key topic and area you need to well prepare to improve your container security posture.
Rise of Docker and Application Container Security Platform – App Container vs VM
Container Security and Virtual Machine
Although containers are seen as an alternative to virtual machines (VM), they are likely less secure due to containers don’t provide the same degree of isolation between applications running on the same host as virtual machines and hyper visors do. Not to mention it is less mature compare with virtual machine technology. So the risk is by default inside outdated container images, worst scenario is the container image is temper by a hacker than being deployed. Due to new technology in the market, less experience professional familiar with it, from handling, updating, patching and operating.
Be note on the positive side for container security as well, it run faster than virtual machines, and more on a single host, due to slimmed-down software stacks and easy to deploy and redeploy applications. Software containers can be thought of as lightweight virtual machines with much leaner system requirements. Containers share the host OS kernel during runtime, making them exceptionally light (only megabytes in size) — and fast. Containers take mere seconds to start, as opposed to a few minutes for spinning up a VM.
Traditional and conventional vulnerability scanning technology is fail to address container security, this is why those big player is either take over those who possess it or accelerate the in house development to possess it. Moving forward, we will for sure saw the extra layer of complexity bring in specialist container security software to address it. So, are your existing vendor product capable or had it as as part of the bundle or addon already? Discover, track, and continuously protect containers is a must in DevOps pipelines and deployments across cloud and on-premises environments use case. Talk with E-SPIN for the various architecture and solution that may potential address your use case.
To know more about Container Security, please click on the link below.
