Advanced Container Security Best Practices [Cheat Sheet]

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Security must extend beyond image scanning:While pre-deployment scanning is critical, runtime threats and misconfigurations require defense-in-depth approaches.
Built-in and open-source tooling can go a long way:From OPA to Tetragon, Vault to Cosign, the cheat sheet gives you practical examples of how to use top tools for container security automation and observability.
Environment-specific guidance matters:Security best practices vary depending on whether you’re running containers in Kubernetes, Docker, OpenShift, or serverless container services like Fargate.

After reading this cheat sheet, you'll be able to:

Strengthen container security across build, deploy, and runtime stages using battle-tested techniques.
Enforce zero trust principles, detect container-level intrusions, and secure inter-service communication.
Apply the right open-source tools and policies for your Kubernetes, Docker, or cloud-native container environments

This cheat sheet is designed for:

What's included?

Short-lived secrets management: Rotate secrets automatically with tools like Vault to reduce the window of exposure.
Secure service-to-service traffic: Use service meshes and mTLS to encrypt and authenticate internal container traffic.
Runtime threat detection with eBPF: Monitor container behavior in real-time using tools like Tetragon.
Intrusion detection policies: Detect unusual activity like suspicious TCP connections at the container level.
Zero trust architecture for containers: Enforce strict access policies using OPA and verify all requests—even internal ones.
Automated security enforcement: Prevent risky configurations (like exposed ports or root containers) before they deploy.
Admission controllers and image signing: Block bad configurations at the API layer and ensure only trusted images are used.
Environment-specific best practices: Tailored security checklists for Kubernetes, Docker, OpenShift, and cloud provider services (EKS, ECS, Fargate).