Top Docker Security Best Practices: 8 BEST Docker Security Tools

Containers have helped development and DevOps teams to increase agility and accelerate application development & delivery. But with these benefits, there could be a loss of visibility and control for teams deploying and managing them. As you’re aware, Containers bundle applications with a lot of software and files that you may not know about or want in your production environment.

As container adoption continues to grow, so does the risk of potential open source vulnerabilities hidden inside them and the increasing need for container security.E.g., If any one of the containers breaks out, it can allow unauthorized access across containers, hosts, or data centers, etc., thus affecting all the containers hosted on the Host OS.

A recent study by Forrester Research cited security as the most common barrier to containerization. And as 96% of applications have open source software components, organizations need to take measures to address open source security throughout the entire DevOps process. With this context, now let’s checkout 8 BEST Docker Security Tools.

For a basic understanding of Docker concepts, please refer to earlier posts for understanding Docker & how to install and containerize applications.

#1. Anchore Cloud

The Anchore Cloud is a free service to let anyone discover and analyze images on public container registries such as DockerHub. Users can perform deep inspection and analysis of images including metadata, build data, and searchable lists of content including all operating system packages, files, and software artifacts such as Ruby GEMs and Node.JS modules.

Key Features :

• Anchore allows users to perform extremely deep container image analysis to see all the operating system packages, Node.JS modules, RubyGEMs, in fact, every file in the image is covered in the analysis.
• Detailed security reports including Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) can be viewed, allowing the user to see what packages triggered vulnerability alerts and if an update is available.
• Images can be marked as favorites to allow fast access to frequently used images.

#2.PingSafe

PingSafe offers a revolutionary Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) that scans images on public container registries like DockerHub. Users can perform agentless vulnerability management and analyze Docker images in real time. PingSafe detects configuration drifts, remediates vulnerabilities, and provides event analyzer capabilities for filtering searches and investigations. 

It offers extensive cloud workload protection for VMs, containers, and serverless functions. The platform offers smooth API integrations, ensures zero false positives, and automatically sends security alerts to administrators whenever new threats are found for quick remediation.

Key Features:

• CI/CD integration support and real-time secret scanning
• Prevents lateral network movement and enforces shift-left security
• Generates graph-based visualizations of EKS and Kubernetes clusters
• Supports CloudFormation, Terraform, Helm, and Kubernetes IaC templates
• Conducts zero-day vulnerability assessments, VM snapshot scanning, and identifies cloud resources with known CVEs
• Prevents cloud credentials leakages like IAM keys, service accounts, and CloudSQL on public repositories
• Monitors domain names and natively integrates with GitHub, Gitlab, and Bitbucket Cloud
• Enables role-based access control, single sign-on capabilities for Gmail and Microsoft, and offers multi-tenancy support
• Continuous compliance with more than 20+ industry regulations, such as PCI-DSS, NIST, ISO 27001, CIS Benchmark, and others

#3.AquaSec

Aqua’s cloud-native security platform provides full visibility and control over containerized environments, with tight runtime security controls and intrusion prevention capabilities, at any scale. The platform provides programmatic access to all its functions via an API, for easy integration and automation.

Key Features :

• Scan images for vulnerabilities, secrets, malware, and configuration issues
• Prevent unapproved images from running in your environment
• Machine learning of legitimate container behavior, based on application context
• Container-level firewall maps connectivity and prevents network  lateral movement
• Securely manages container access to ‘secrets’ across environments

#4.BlackDuck

Black Duck OpsSight helps you prevent known open source vulnerabilities from being deployed into production environments.

Key Features :

• OpsSight works with your container orchestration platform to scan any container image as it is utilized within the cluster and report on any known vulnerabilities by checking against our comprehensive KnowledgeBase.
• OpsSight listens for any changes within your orchestration platform’s event streams.
• Scan results are placed as metadata on the container image so you can display vulnerability risk and enforce policies directly from the console of your container orchestration platform.
• Identify and highlight any images that contain disclosed open source vulnerabilities
• Flag container images that violate open source security policies
• Receive automated alerts when any newly discovered vulnerabilities may affect container images in use within your cluster

#5.Cilium

Existing Linux network security mechanisms (e.g., iptables) only operate at the network and transport layers (i.e., IP addresses and ports) and lack visibility into the microservices layer. Cilium brings API-aware network security filtering to Linux container frameworks like Docker and Kubernetes. Using a new Linux kernel technology called BPF, Cilium provides a simple and efficient way to define and enforce both network-layer and application-layer security policies based on container/pod identity.

#6.Docker Bench

Docker Bench for Security is a script that checks for dozens of common best practices around deploying Docker containers in production. The tests are all automated and are inspired by the CIS Docker Community Edition Benchmark v1.1.0.

The script is packaged as a Docker container, just copying and pasting the docker run one-liner from its homepage can instantly see the results of ~250 checks for your running Docker containers and the host running the Docker engine.

#7.Sysdig Falco

Sysdig Falco is an open-source, container security monitor designed to detect anomalous activity in your applications. Falco lets you continuously monitor and detect container, application, host, and network activity. From all in one place, from one source of data, with one set of customizable rules.

#8.Notary

The Notary project comprises a server and a client for running and interacting with trusted collections. Notary aims to make the internet more secure by making it easy for people to publish and verify content.

With Notary, publishers can sign their content offline using keys kept highly secure. Once the publisher is ready to make the content available, they can push their signed trusted collection to a Notary Server. Consumers, having acquired the publisher’s public key through a secure channel, can then communicate with any notary server or (insecure) mirror, relying only on the publisher’s key to determine the validity and integrity of the received content.

#9.Sysdig Secure

Sysdig Secure takes a services-aware approach to run-time security and forensics. Bringing together deep container visibility with Docker and Kubernetes integration to block threats more effectively.

Key Features :

• Create a single policy based on application, container, host, or network activities that automatically applies to an entire service – even as containers move, grow, or shrink.
• Pause or kill a container based on policy violations. Send alerts to Slack, Splunk, PagerDuty, and anywhere else with a webhook.
• Reduce noise with an intelligent feed that aggregates events.
• Examine every user command executed in a host or a container. Group, filter, and search to quickly audit anomalous events.
• Snapshot of 100% of activity pre-and-post policy violation.

Additional Resources

• TOP 6 GUI tools for managing Docker environments
• Kubernetes tutorial – Scale & perform updates to your app
• Kubernetes tutorial – Create deployments using YAML file
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