5 unique container and Kubernetes challenges that Wiz addresses

The digital transformation landscape is rapidly evolving, with Kubernetes and containerized applications at the forefront of this shift. As organizations increasingly adopt cloud-native architectures, the need for robust security, scalability, and operational efficiency has become critical. Key trends include the rise of microservices, automation in deployment pipelines, and enhanced observability for real-time insights. 

However, concerns persist around the complexity of managing containerized environments, ensuring security across the software supply chain, and preventing misconfigurations. As businesses scale their operations, balancing innovation with security and governance in Kubernetes ecosystems remains a top priority.

This blog will focus on the challenges within the Kubernetes environment and how Wiz’s solution addresses them.

Complexities while deploying and managing Kubernetes environments

There is a tension between ease of use in deploying containerized applications and the underlying complexities of maintaining security, both pre-deployment and at runtime. The focus is on creating visibility, automating security measures, and improving observability without adding friction to development workflows. But there are a few complexities including – 

1. Security of the Code: Securing the code used in containerized applications is a significant focus. Developers often rely on open-source libraries to build their applications, introducing security concerns. It’s essential to understand the security risks and vulnerabilities of the libraries.
2. Building and Deployment: After addressing code security, the next focus is on the build and deployment pipeline. Automation helps streamline this process, but safeguards are necessary to prevent issues from being deployed into production environments. Ensuring automated checks and balances is crucial.

1. Complexity of Kubernetes: While Kubernetes is relatively easy to deploy in cloud environments, its ease of deployment doesn’t guarantee security. The complexity behind Kubernetes configurations must be carefully managed to ensure secure configurations without overburdening developers.
2. Runtime Security and Observability: Lastly, even with preventive measures, there’s still a need for observability and security at runtime. Tools like eBPF (Extended Berkeley Packet Filter) are gaining traction because they provide insight into how systems behave in real-time, enabling better detection and mitigation of potential issues.

5 Challenges while implementing Kubernetes and container security

The key challenges organizations face when implementing Kubernetes and container security in the cloud revolve around several critical roadblocks, mainly due to the complexity of cloud environments. While the cloud offers significant ease and flexibility, it also requires organizations to rethink their security, governance, and operational practices to capitalize on the benefits while minimizing risks entirely. 

Here are the five significant challenges while implementing Kubernetes and container security:

1. Shadow IT and Lack of Control: Cloud environments make it easy for individuals within an organization to spin up services and build applications without oversight. This lack of control leads to “shadow IT,” where departments or teams are using cloud resources without the knowledge or governance of IT or security teams. This results in misconfigurations and security vulnerabilities because users may not fully understand the tools they’re using.
2. Misconfigurations: One of the most common issues in cloud environments is misconfiguration. Due to the ease of deployment, users often rely on automation scripts or resources from the internet without fully understanding their implications. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools have emerged to help monitor and remediate these misconfigurations, but they represent an ongoing challenge for organizations to track.

1. Overprivileged Accounts and Identity Management: Cloud environments make creating and managing user identities easy, but this also introduces the risk of creating overprivileged accounts, often unintentionally. Historically, on-prem environments have suffered from overprivileged access, and this issue is frequently carried over to the cloud, where users are granted more permissions than necessary, leading to potential security risks.

1. Transition from On-Prem to Cloud: Organizations often need help applying the same security processes and operational models from on-premise environments to the cloud. The cloud requires a different approach, and many organizations need to prepare to change their methods and security models. This involves rethinking how they manage security and handle incidents in the cloud environment.
2. Rearchitecting Applications: Many organizations make the mistake of doing a “lift and shift” to the cloud—moving monolithic applications or virtual machines (VMs) to the cloud without re-architecting them for a more modern cloud-native environment. This leads to inefficiencies and doesn’t take advantage of the benefits of containerization and Kubernetes, such as scalability and resilience. The challenge here is rearchitecting applications for the cloud, which is often a significant and resource-intensive process.

Wiz’s strategic approach

Wiz takes a cloud-native approach to solving cloud security, mainly focusing on container and Kubernetes environments. Here are the key principles they follow:

1. Born in the Cloud: Wiz emphasizes the importance of being “born in the cloud,” meaning its solutions are designed specifically for the cloud and not just adapted from on-premise environments. It is crucial to understand how the cloud works and build security solutions tailored to it.

1. API Integration: Leveraging cloud APIs is a core principle. By integrating seamlessly with cloud environments, Wiz ensures their solutions fully align with its operations. The API-driven architecture allows for deep integration and smooth interaction with cloud services.

1. Agentless Scanning: Wiz opted for an agentless approach to security scanning. This means their solutions do not require additional software or agents on systems. Instead, they use cloud-provided APIs to scan and monitor environments. This simplifies the process and provides visibility into environments without introducing new complexities.

• Visibility and Detection: One of the main challenges in cloud security is shadow IT—unknown or unmonitored cloud usage. Wiz addresses this by providing complete visibility into an organization’s cloud environment. By connecting to the organization’s accounts and scanning them, they can detect all activity, ensuring nothing goes unnoticed.
• Contextual Understanding: The cloud’s complexity means that more than traditional vulnerability management approaches is needed. Wiz focuses on understanding the context of vulnerabilities within the cloud environment. Instead of just listing vulnerabilities, they prioritize them based on their importance and the specific cloud architecture, helping organizations focus on the most critical issues.

Future of Kubernetes security

Several critical evolutions in container and Kubernetes security are expected to occur in the next one to two years. 

1. Contextual Security:

Kubernetes must be understood as part of a broader cloud environment, not in isolation. It’s often deployed as a managed service on top of other cloud platforms like AWS or Azure, so securing both the Kubernetes cluster and the underlying cloud infrastructure is essential. The interactions between these layers will become increasingly important.

2. Integration of Agent-Based and Agentless Approaches:

The future of container security will involve a hybrid approach, combining agent-based and agentless technologies. Both methods are necessary, and solutions will need to fuse the best features of each to provide more comprehensive security coverage.

3. Increased Focus on Observability:

Observability will grow in importance, especially for monitoring east-west traffic (internal communication between microservices). Organizations will move beyond identifying vulnerabilities and focus on real-time visibility into how microservices interact within applications. This helps with performance monitoring and threat detection in real time.

4. Microservices and Application-Centric Security:

Security will shift from being infrastructure-focused to being application-centric. This involves understanding the security posture of the entire application and how its microservices communicate rather than just focusing on the container or infrastructure layer.

5. Supply Chain Security:

The security of the software development lifecycle will become a critical area of focus, especially in light of recent incidents where malicious actors have embedded vulnerabilities in open-source code over time. Ensuring code security from open-source libraries, through the development pipeline, and into production environments will be crucial.

These trends indicate a move toward more profound, more integrated security solutions that provide real-time insight into infrastructure and application layers while addressing the entire software supply chain.

This blog is based on the webinar with Nicolas Ehrman, Product Marketing Manager at Wiz. You can watch the full video here.