Containers have taken over the world of software development. According to Gartner analysts, “90% of global organizations will be running containerized applications in production by 2026,” up from 40% in 2021. But with this transformation comes a new attack surface to protect for developers and security teams alike. In fact, Chainguard’s recent CISO & Developer Trends in Software Supply Chain Security Report found that only 2 in 5 developers say that CISOs are very familiar with container images — the ingredients needed to build and run your container — thus presenting an opportunity for better alignment on how to secure this critical technology in the supply chain.
Containerized applications are proven to provide enterprises with a modern, agile approach in the age of cloud computing and new, modern methods of protecting these technologies are needed to protect against existing and future threats. Let’s dive in to see how Chainguard can help your organization build, ship, and run hardened, minimal container images.
Adopt proactive strategies to improve container security posture
A recent report from Chainguard Labs found that software companies that build and operate containers are spending thousands of hours each year, if not more, on vulnerability management. Chainguard helps you embrace a proactive container security posture by utilizing minimal, hardened images with SBOMs, signatures, and vulnerability scanning to significantly reduce vulnerabilities and attack surface. Chainguard’s approach to ‘inbox zero’ for common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) ensures a sizable reduction in vulnerabilities, streamlining your team’s security maintenance of container images.
Reactive measures to address vulnerabilities in your container images fall short and can set your team’s budget and productivity back significantly. Chainguard’s Images solution, with its reduced attack surface and continuous monitoring and update cadence, offers an effective alternative to common reactive or convenience strategies, such as developers pulling container images with known-vulnerabilities or not updating container images fast enough to remediate CVEs.
Automate container builds
Using full-time engineers for container builds offers customization and hands-on control, vital for organizations with complex or regulated systems. However, this method can strain resources, leading to slower development cycles and increased labor costs.
Chainguard Images offer scalability and consistency for your container build processes. Chainguard Images are updated daily and do not have to wait for upstream releases. This approach reduces manual labor while ensuring high security standards.
This can be beneficial for a wide variety of organizations, from startups and SMEs looking to optimize resource allocation, to organizations that service and sell to the federal government looking to streamline compliance efforts and unlock government contracts. Using Chainguard Images helps you to gain end-to-end productivity from your developers that also secures your organization’s software supply chain.
Conquer CVE fatigue
Security teams play a vital role in identifying and assessing vulnerabilities across an organization. However, identifying, triaging, and then patching CVEs found in your container images is a lengthy, cumbersome process that introduces a lot of toil and friction for organizations that need to move fast and ship new products and services to customers.
Conducting robust and accurate CVE triage requires dedicated staff and a significant time investment, translating into higher operational costs and potential delays in addressing critical vulnerabilities. Teams often become inundated with these tasks that distract them from more important tasks like focusing on product and business innovation.
Chainguard Images are designed to minimize false positives in scanning tools, making CVE identification more accurate and actionable for security teams. This level of accuracy allows teams to focus on fixing the most important or critical security issues impacting business. No more noisy false positives or negatives that eat up time that could otherwise be used building and shipping software. See how we used our own technology to help us accelerate our SOC 2 compliance process.
With this proactive approach, you can alleviate the pain, time, and resources spent triaging, investigating, and patching CVEs found in popular container images. Chainguard’s approach to vulnerability management delivers an 80% lower CVE accumulation rate compared to industry alternatives in addition to faster update and patch delivery. These advantages reduce operational costs and could save your organization hundreds or even thousands of hours of annual staff time spent triaging CVEs.
Get started with Chainguard Images today
Building or developing processes in house for container security within your organization can pose a variety of challenges, such as maintaining a positive customer experience when it comes to CVE remediation and stretching thin the productivity and efficiency of engineering and security teams tasked with the manual work of identifying, triaging, and patching vulnerabilities.
There is a better way, and Chainguard Images can help your organization improve your customers’ security experiences and outcomes, expedite business innovation to unlock new revenue streams, and enhance developer and security teams’ productivity to focus on the most critical product and business priorities within your organization.
Contact us to see how you can accomplish a robust container security strategy with Chainguard Images today!
