DevSecOps establishes inbuilt security in Container development - Rahul S Kurkure, Founder and Director, Cloud.in

Today’s businesses place a high priority on applications and their secure implementation. To ensure this, a robust strategy for the delivery of the products and their updates on time is necessary. The application developer focuses on faster delivery, modernization, agility, scalability, portability, fault tolerances, and lifecycle management, where leveraging containers enables achieving all these. Traditional and cumbersome practices where the developer has to install the version that matched the machine’s operating system to run any application can be eliminated with containerization. Containerization is a software deployment process of implementing containers that bundles an application’s code with all the files and libraries it needs to run on any infrastructure. It is cost-effective and easy to use as well.  Containers can be created to run on various types of devices and operating systems.

Fast expanding Application Container Market

Although containers have existed for decades, it is only after the arrival of Docker – the open-source containerization platform in 2013, their usage has increased.  The application container market size has expanded significantly, driven by accelerated digital transformation activities and cloud-based apps across industry verticals.  Other factors contributing to the fast-growing market include microservices architecture and customer-oriented marketing strategies.

According to Verified Market Research, the Application Container Market Size which was valued at USD 2.76 Billion in 2021 is projected to reach USD 33.86 Billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 32.12% from 2023 to 2030. Containers deliver standardized development, testing, and production environment and containerization is good for businesses that leverage DevOps to increase the speed of delivering applications. Containers are suitable for microservices architectures and help in scaling each of the microservices. They are also suitable for automation and multi-cloud environments.

Container security vulnerabilities

Although containerization is gaining traction across organizations, due to its several benefits and there is increase in market share, it has now become an easy target for threat actors.  Unfortunately, there is concern about the vulnerable containers and the associated security risks.

Vulnerabilities within applications, application frameworks, or libraries it depends on, can be open to attacks.  Well-secured applications can become vulnerable to incorrectly configured default settings and access controls.  Weak encryption algorithms can give away sensitive information stored in the apps.  Misconfiguration can exist in a container or even in the host and can pose a great threat to the organization.  Sometimes container networks may not be secured in organizations and unknowingly permit traffic from one container to access all other containers.  Vulnerabilities in the operating systems can also allow access to containers, thus exploiting them.

Yes, it is more challenging to secure a container than traditional virtual machines.  When vulnerabilities are found in the container library, the entire project will come to a standstill.  Security teams will send the application back to the DevOps team for reprogramming which will be followed by another round of detailed documentation.  All this will lead to an increase in costs and other issues compelling the C-Suite to step in.

DevSecOps approach to the container development lifecycle

Such bloopers between Security and DevOps teams are quite common, especially in organizations where the development, operations, and security teams do not collaborate and work together. However, in recent days, these teams have begun to collaborate and cooperate in many organizations, thus introducing the concept of DevSecOps, a cultural change in organizations.  In this concept, Security is embedded in the DevOps process thus ensuring the security aspect is addressed at the early stage in the app development delivery change instead of adding it at the end of it.  Security will have to be addressed at every level of the product development lifecycle. To ensure this is followed, training and education should be provided on secure coding to developers and their responsibilities have to be defined in the DevSecOps approach of ‘shifting security left’. 

The objectives every organization should work towards are ‘secure by design’ principles and ‘security-first’ approaches getting implemented. It is equally important to establish security settings by default too.  While working in a container-based environment, developers keep discovering new and efficient ways to work while building an application. In such a scenario, it is mandatory for DevSecOps to build design principles into the development process at the very outset.  This also ensures the security team gets involved from the first day.

Furthermore, developers and operations teams should be provided with relevant tools to build secure applications.  Also, in end-to-end security for container environments, security architecture has to be based on industry best practices by leveraging high-end and best security technologies and solutions.