Container security entails establishing and following build, deployment, and runtime procedures that safeguard a Linux container, including the software it supports and the infrastructure it depends on.

Developing container security solutions that support these infrastructure transitions is a challenge for security teams as enterprises adopt microservice design patterns and container technologies like Docker and Kubernetes. The overall security posture of a company must be supported by integrated, ongoing container security. This is where following some Azure container security best practices is helpful.

A powerful platform for creating and delivering containerized applications is Azure Container Services (ACS). However, containers’ scale and flexibility necessitate the right security safeguards.

This blog article will review Azure Container Security Best Practices and pointers for protecting your ACS deployments.

Table of Contents:

1. What is Azure Container Security?
2. Why is Azure Container Security Important?
3. Azure Container Security Best Practices
4. Why PingSafe for Azure Container Security?
5. Conclusion

What is Azure Container Security?

The second-largest and fastest-expanding cloud-based application currently available is Microsoft Azure. Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform that allows developers to create, manage, and deploy applications anywhere and is used by 95% of Fortune 500 firms. Virtual Machines, the Internet of Things, and containers are just a few of its numerous services.

In addition to the two required busy infrastructure, Microsoft Azure containers offer developers and organizations the agility and scalability they seek in a cloud service. Building containers on Azure is advantageous, but they lack native, integrated security. The responsibility for Azure container security rests on the customer.

Why is Azure Container Security Important?

A security review might be the last set of tests conducted in a standard software development project. However, the attack surface is substantially larger, and security becomes more complicated with contemporary cloud-native development practices. Code is regularly updated and consumed from various repositories in cloud-native systems where containers are the default application delivery format. At numerous times during the development and deployment cycle, human error—such as incorrect configurations—can let in the bad guys. Virtually anywhere is susceptible to security flaws.

A crucial step that should be one of many layers of security is scanning container images for malware and other security flaws. The security of the entire software supply chain, or all processes involved in the creation and deployment of containerized software, including dependencies and runtime environments, must be considered by organizations. 

Azure Container Security Best Practices

Here is a list of Azure container security best practices:

• Use Identity and Access Management (IAM): A key factor in Azure container security best practices for safeguarding workloads in any public cloud is Identity and Access Management (IAM). If you use Azure, be careful to fully utilize its IAM architecture to control access to your cloud resources using the least privilege concept. Although Azure IAM differs slightly from other cloud IAMs in operation due to its Active Directory foundation, you can still implement the same granular access control configurations on Azure as you might on other significant public clouds, as we will detail below.
• Use Azure virtual networks and private clouds to separate your cloud environments at the network level, if possible. Most IaaS and PaaS-based workloads (and some SaaS-based workloads) can be isolated in private networks or virtual private clouds, albeit these services aren’t accessible for every type of Azure application.
• Utilize Cloud Tags: Azure enables resource labeling and organization using tags like most other clouds. Tags are helpful from a security standpoint since they simplify keeping track of which cloud resources you have operating and where, even though tags-free cloud services aren’t inherently less safe. As a result, they make sure you don’t forget about particular workloads while setting up access restrictions, auditing your cloud environment, and other similar tasks.
• Secure Azure Data: You should encrypt your cloud data as well as the transport layers that you use to access data, in addition to using other Azure container security best practices like IAM to control access to data that you store in Azure Blob Storage or other storage services within Azure. Azure also provides a “lock” function for storage accounts that helps limit illegal access to cloud data.
• Protect the Azure Container Registry: It’s critical to embrace security as a daily requirement rather than a luxury. Employing an SDL as Azure container security best practices can help us improve our security posture. We can also automate a lot of security code analysis using various technologies.
• Your Container Registry’s admin account should be disabled as Azure container security best practices.
• It costs money, even though it’s a handy way to grant access to your ACR or Azure Container Registry. It costs nothing but a single account and password to view your container registry. Of course, this can be avoided by following Azure container security best practices, disabling the admin account, and turning on RBAC and Azure AD authorization. Managed identities, service principals, or users—whatever fits your architecture and infrastructure but ultimately proves more traceable—are all acceptable options.

Why PingSafe for Azure Container Security?

PingSafe is a thorough cloud security platform that offers defense for businesses of all sizes and industries. It can assist in removing all dangers and issues, recognized and unseen. This well-known platform is aware of the attack strategy.

Features:

• Configuration mistakes are automatically handled and fixed in the cloud. Graphs show resource misconfigurations, lateral movement paths, and impact radius.
• Monitoring ongoing security posture of new or existing cloud services, concentrating on security issues and advised practices, and alerting to security defaults.
• Building as a Code: comparing the implementation and configuration of IaC to other standards like PCI-DSS and the CIS benchmark. CI/CD integration support can be used to stop merge and pull requests with hardcoded secrets.
• Locate the cloud assets/resources with CVEs known to be vulnerable (information from 10 or more sources with extensive coverage). 
• Threat Watch: A dashboard for tracking issues with the environment’s zero-day vulnerabilities.
• Security vulnerability assessment for virtual machine snapshots and bill of materials (BOM) reporting for agentless apps.

Conclusion

An effective platform for creating and delivering containerized applications is Azure Container Services. However, given containers’ adaptability and scalability, it is crucial to take suitable security precautions. You may aid in the security of your ACS deployments and protect your apps and data by adhering to the best practices and advice in this blog article.