At present, we are in an era of
continuous integration and development of
container, orchestrator,
microservices and DevOps functions. We must seize the opportunity and pursue the construction of more secure and reliable systems. This article mainly talks about that with the wide application of containerization and microservices (including the orchestrator
Kubernetes), it has brought new challenges and opportunities for enterprises to build and design secure infrastructure and applications. Proper use and configuration of DevOps can Build a more secure environment.
Container and
microservice technologies (including orchestrator Kubernetes) provide excellent opportunities for building and designing secure infrastructure and applications.
The containerized environment is the core of digital transformation, and it is becoming mainstream at an alarming rate. Cloud-native architecture and microservice-based applications are critical to the company's rapid growth. In order to develop as safely and quickly as possible, companies must mature their container security strategies and implementation methods as soon as possible.
As production deployment accelerates, security vulnerabilities become exceptionally obvious, which poses a direct risk to the enterprise. We have long known that traditional security tools and products can no longer protect containers and microservices. Most companies that use container deployments are concerned about security strategies and insufficient investment, and hope that new companies can provide specialized solutions.
As they deploy to new container security platforms, the company realizes that they must also take advantage of the inherent security capabilities and architecture of cloud native and container ecosystems. Containers and microservices technologies (such as Kubernetes) provide excellent opportunities for building and designing secure infrastructure and applications. The best security platform for these technologies is to use the powerful functions of the entire ecosystem, rather than adding a part of the security functions separated from the infrastructure.
New challenges and strategic changes
When the
container environment is built and used correctly, it is inherently more secure. However, it takes some experience to configure and operate these systems safely. Generally, security teams have no experience with containers or Kubernetes. Many companies are reconsidering their security roles and responsibilities based on the containers used.
Enhancing Kubernetes security is one of the most basic things an organization can do to protect containerized applications. Kubernetes has become the orchestrator of choice for most container deployments. Part of the reason it is a powerful solution is how much you can control it, but there are many "knobs" that need to be adjusted, which can cause errors. If the dashboard is not set up correctly and role-based access control is implemented, business risks may be introduced through unnecessary exposure. In addition, because Kubernetes is widely used, it is becoming a standard.
We recommend spending time on protection and hardening-Kubernetes contains many moving parts, and considering its role in application development, which team should protect it becomes a problem.
DevOps is closer to security
With the rise of cloud services and cloud-native architectures, the CIO team has moved from providing and running infrastructure to supporting applications. Now, with containerization, the security team is undergoing a similar transformation, enabling rather than operating security features. This is because as security gets closer to the application, it enters the DevOps space. Because of the expertise and core role of DevOps team members in building, testing, and deploying applications, they must be responsible for protecting these applications and their infrastructure. The security team may still define policies and set up guardrails, but DevOps will increasingly use the security tools closest to containerized applications.
DevOps also knows how to build security into the infrastructure early in the software development lifecycle. Through the granularity of container technology, scalability and agility can be improved. In a cloud-native environment, the control layer and the data layer are intertwined, and a layer of logic can be written to build continuous, immediate execution.
Containers and microservices enable you to make modifications (including security fixes) on an almost continuous basis. To fix the problem, simply replace a bad image with a good one, stop the affected containers, and when these containers are rebuilt, they will automatically use the updated image. This way, you can resolve security vulnerabilities without breaking the entire application.
By weaving security solutions into the infrastructure and bringing it closer to the application, DevOps can be a headache for hackers. If they successfully infiltrate, the bad guys can usually only see what is in a container—expanding the scope of the attack means they must replicate the intrusion strategy multiple times.
Given the inherent security architecture of the container,
security and DevOps teams can work together to protect the infrastructure. Security team members do not have to fully understand all development tools-they can focus on sharing security principles and strategies applied to new development tools. If DevOps and Security implement a container security platform that integrates native DevOps tools, such as using Kubernetes to enforce network policies, then they can better learn how to work together in new ways and use each other's language.
Pursue excellence
Intelligent, actionable, built-in visibility and control should be an integral part of any responsible security model. This is already a very high demand. Using container technology, we have increased the need for portability. For enterprises trying to deploy operations and protect containers across hybrid and multi-cloud deployments, the security model must be holistic, highly portable, and deeply integrated. Health, vulnerability management and prevention are the direction of security work today.
As containerized and cloud-native models are used to build more important infrastructure, we need to turn our attention to monitoring.
Vulnerability scanning and hardening are important, but to deal with runtime attacks, you need monitoring capabilities. And you can't fix it manually—designed as a system that scales quickly and iterates frequently, like containers, requires automation and machine learning. Kubernetes and containers provide the ability to automatically execute specific responses to all monitored content. The most effective security solutions will be those that make operational monitoring possible—and eliminate counterproductive alarm streams.
There is more to do. Thanks to the aggregation of container, orchestrator, microservices and
DevOps capabilities, we are at the center of exciting possibilities. If we can grasp this momentum, we can raise standards, promote portability and security integration, encourage cooperation, and make strategic investments to build holistic, sustainable systems and protect our digitally transformed world.
