Container images play a very important role in modern application development because they provide an ideal environment where codes can run smoothly. However, with the growing popularity of the containers, the security risks are also increasing.
So to keep your containers safe, you need to follow some of the best practices in order to manage the container image security more efficiently. If you are thinking about what practices you are talking about, so read our today’s blog because it’s all about the best practices to manage container image security.
Use Trusted Images
The very first step is to make sure the container security is, using the trusted container images. These images should come from reliable resources such as official repositories like Docker Hub or Red Hat’s registry. When you use images from trusted resources, the benefit you get is you can easily prevent malicious codes or vulnerabilities from entering into your system.
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Avoid third-party, unverified images: Always prefer official or well-maintained community images.
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Check image authenticity: You should also verify image signatures to make sure they haven’t been changed.
Scan Images for Vulnerabilities
Before you deploy the container-images, you should always scan them for vulnerabilities. Because vulnerabilities always come into the container from outdated software, misconfigurations, or malicious code that is hidden inside the images. So if you do scanning on a regular basis, it can identify the issues earlier.
There are many options that allow you to scan the images, some of those are:
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Anchore
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Falco
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Rapidfort
These tools help you find known vulnerabilities and make sure that your container images remain safe over time.
Limit Container Privileges
Containers should have only the necessary permissions they need to do their job, and nothing more. This helps keep them secure and reduces the risk of problems if something goes wrong. If you allow containers to run with too many permissions, it increases the risk of an attacker exploiting those permissions.
You can also restrict the capabilities of the container by:
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Running containers as non-root users: Containers should not run as the root user, as it can give attackers more control.
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Use read-only file systems: If you restrict the write permissions, you can reduce the chance that someone might change or damage the important system files.
Implement Access Controls
If you implement access control into the system, it can help you manage who can build, push, and push container images. This also protects your container-images from any unauthorized access.
Key actions to implement access control:
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Use Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Give permissions according to what each user does.
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Set strong authentication: Set a multi-factor authentication (MFA) setting, when it comes to accessing sensitive images.
Scan Your Images Regularly
Scanning your container images once is not enough. because it requires continuous scanning. As new vulnerabilities are discovered regularly, so it becomes very important here you must scan the images regularly in order to detect and fix the issue quickly.
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Schedule automatic scans: Regularly check your images for vulnerabilities because this is a part of your container security process.
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Integrate scanning into CI/CD pipelines: Automating scans during the build process makes sure that vulnerable images are detected before deployment.
Reduce Attack Surface
In this practice, you try to minimize those components in your images that could be exploited easily. So if they contain fewer components of your images, it means there is less chance of vulnerabilities to occur.
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Use minimal base images: Always try to choose lightweight base images like Alpine Linux.
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Remove unused software: Only include essential libraries and dependencies in your container-images.
FAQs
1. Why is container image security important?
Container image security is very important because if they are not secure they can result in problems like hacked applications, stolen data, or issues that make the system stop working properly.
2. What tools can I use to scan container images?
You can use tools like Clair, Trivy, and Anchore to scan container-images for vulnerabilities.
3. Why should containers run as non-root users?
Running containers as non-root users limits what they can access on the system. This helps minimize the damage an attacker could cause if they manage to get inside.