In the midst of the AI revolution that is reshaping our future, containerized platforms have become the core infrastructure for modern applications. Their unparalleled scalability, short deployment cycles, and efficiency make them indispensable for rapid application deployment. According to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), 80% of organizations using Kubernetes plan to build most of their new applications on cloud-native platforms within the next five years.
As organizations adopt container technology, ensuring robust runtime protection is essential to safeguard against sophisticated threats during the most critical phase of application execution. To do that, however, security operations center (SOC) teams will first have to overcome a few key challenges.
Core obstacles when securing containers at runtime
Adversaries often target containers at runtime, as this is when applications are running and actively processing data. However, due to the way containers are built and the cloud’s interconnected nature, a single misconfigured container can expose the entire cluster to threat actors.
Attackers can break out from a compromised container to its host, move laterally to critical cloud assets, and compromise valuable business data or hijack cloud compute resources for their own nefarious purposes, such as cryptomining. Detecting, investigating, and responding to these attacks is incredibly difficult given the speed, scale, complexity, and how developer-focused containerized environments can be.
Additionally, as cloud-native compute, container workloads are highly ephemeral—rapidly spinning up and down based on demand. Because these workloads don’t have the same unique identities as traditional compute virtual machines (VMs), it’s extremely difficult for SOC teams to track assets and correlate events since the vulnerable workload can disappear before the SOC can investigate.
Securing containers in a runtime environment is especially challenging in Kubernetes due to its complexity and layered structure. With multiple layers managing workloads, networking, and access, Kubernetes creates a dynamic system where containers are constantly starting, stopping, and interacting. This constant movement makes it difficult to maintain visibility, enforce consistent security policies, and protect against potential threats. Additionally, because misconfigurations and attacks can manifest at every single layer of this environment’s structure, SOC teams often struggle to maintain a unified view of container-specific threats and accurately pinpoint the specific component that’s been compromised.
Many SOC analysts also lack the specialized knowledge needed to assess and remediate container-specific threats, which can lead to misdiagnosed issues and slower response times.
Simplify container runtime security for comprehensive visibility, context, and real-time threat protection
For SOC teams to accurately detect, investigate, and respond to container threats at runtime, they need a cloud-native solution that unifies posture and threat protection security findings into a single-pane-of-glass view. This unified solution provides the streamlined visibility and context needed to understand where a threat or vulnerability lies and the priority with which it needs to be addressed. It also increases SOC efficiency by removing the need to manually correlate information in order to diagnose the issue and identify the correct owner to help remediate.
For example, if a threat actor attempts to exploit a vulnerability in a container runtime environment (whether Azure, multicloud, or hybrid), a comprehensive solution should automatically detect the anomalous behavior, map the threat actor’s lateral movement, and correlate it with misconfigurations or vulnerabilities in the container or surrounding infrastructure. The SOC team can then immediately access contextual alerts and AI-guided remediation, reducing the need for manual investigation and accelerating time-to-response and impact analysis.
This comprehensive approach empowers decision-makers with confidence that their teams can proactively secure cloud-native workloads while efficiently responding to incidents when they occur, enabling both operational resilience and innovation.
Microsoft’s container security solution empowers organizations to proactively secure their containerized environments while enabling advanced threat hunting. By providing a unified, cloud-native platform that aggregates security data across the organizations digital assets—including containers, Kubernetes clusters, and underlying cloud infrastructure—it allows security teams to gain deeper visibility and quickly detect potential threats. With powerful query capabilities, threat intelligence integration, and automated detection, business decision-makers can ensure their teams are not only responding to incidents faster but also hunting for emerging threats with greater precision. This comprehensive, integrated approach streamlines security operations, reduces risk, and helps organizations stay ahead of evolving security challenges in their cloud-native environments.
To learn more about how you can streamline container security with a unified cloud-native approach, visit Microsoft’s cloud security solutions page.
Written by Maya Herskovic, a Principal Manager at Microsoft, heading a team of Product Managers, responsible for the Container security domain in Microsoft’s Defender for cloud, a Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) security suite.
Her team delivers comprehensive solutions across every phase of the code-to-cloud journey, safeguarding cloud-native applications from development through runtime. Maya’s career spans technical and leadership roles at Oracle, RSA, and Microsoft, with expertise in Cloud Security, DevSecOps, Machine Learning, Online Banking Fraud, E-commerce Fraud, and Cyber Intelligence. She holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Economics and an MBA with Dean’s Honors for Excellence from Tel Aviv University.
