Container Security for SREs: The Practical Checklist

Security Is Part of Reliability

SREs think about availability, latency, and throughput. But a security breach is just another type of incident - often the worst kind. Here's the container security checklist I use.

The Base Image Problem

# Bad: 800MB image with everything including gcc
FROM ubuntu:22.04
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y python3 python3-pip
COPY . /app
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt

# Good: 50MB image with only what's needed
FROM python:3.11-slim AS builder
COPY requirements.txt .
RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt

FROM python:3.11-slim
COPY --from=builder /usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages /usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages
COPY . /app
USER nobody

Smaller image = smaller attack surface. The multi-stage build removes build tools from the final image.

The Security Checklist

1. Image Scanning

# GitHub Actions: Scan before pushing
- name: Scan image for vulnerabilities
  uses: aquasecurity/trivy-action@master
  with:
    image-ref: 'myapp:${{ github.sha }}'
    format: 'table'
    exit-code: '1'            # Fail build on HIGH/CRITICAL
    severity: 'HIGH,CRITICAL'
    ignore-unfixed: true      # Only fail on fixable vulns

2. Non-Root Container

# Always run as non-root
RUN addgroup --system app && adduser --system --ingroup app app
USER app

# Kubernetes: Enforce non-root
securityContext:
  runAsNonRoot: true
  runAsUser: 1000
  readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
  allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
  capabilities:
    drop: ["ALL"]

3. Network Policies

# Default deny all traffic
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: NetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: default-deny-all
spec:
  podSelector: {}
  policyTypes:
    - Ingress
    - Egress
---
# Allow only specific traffic
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: NetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: api-service-policy
spec:
  podSelector:
    matchLabels:
      app: api-service
  ingress:
    - from:
        - podSelector:
            matchLabels:
              app: nginx-ingress
      ports:
        - port: 8080
  egress:
    - to:
        - podSelector:
            matchLabels:
              app: postgres
      ports:
        - port: 5432

4. Secrets Management

# Bad: Secrets in environment variables
env:
  - name: DB_PASSWORD
    value: "super-secret-password"   # Visible in pod spec!

# Good: Secrets from external vault
env:
  - name: DB_PASSWORD
    valueFrom:
      secretKeyRef:
        name: db-credentials
        key: password

# Best: Secrets injected from Vault
annotations:
  vault.hashicorp.com/agent-inject: "true"
  vault.hashicorp.com/role: "api-service"
  vault.hashicorp.com/agent-inject-secret-db: "secret/data/db"

5. Resource Limits (Security Aspect)

# Without limits, a compromised container can consume all resources
resources:
  requests:
    cpu: 100m
    memory: 128Mi
  limits:
    cpu: 500m
    memory: 256Mi
    ephemeral-storage: 100Mi   # Prevent disk filling attacks

6. Pod Security Standards

# Enforce restricted security standard at namespace level
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: production
  labels:
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce: restricted
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/audit: restricted
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/warn: restricted

The Audit Automation

I run this weekly:

#!/bin/bash
# weekly-security-audit.sh

echo "=== Image Age Check ==="
kubectl get pods -A -o json | jq -r '.items[] | .spec.containers[] | .image' | sort -u | while read img; do
  age=$(skopeo inspect docker://$img 2>/dev/null | jq -r '.Created')
  echo "$img - built: $age"
done

echo "=== Privileged Containers ==="
kubectl get pods -A -o json | jq -r '.items[] | select(.spec.containers[].securityContext.privileged == true) | .metadata.namespace + "/" + .metadata.name'

echo "=== Containers Running as Root ==="
kubectl get pods -A -o json | jq -r '.items[] | select(.spec.securityContext.runAsNonRoot != true) | .metadata.namespace + "/" + .metadata.name'

echo "=== Missing Resource Limits ==="
kubectl get pods -A -o json | jq -r '.items[] | select(.spec.containers[].resources.limits == null) | .metadata.namespace + "/" + .metadata.name'

Every finding becomes a ticket. No exceptions.

If you want automated security monitoring for your container infrastructure, check out what we're building at Nova AI Ops.

Written by Dr. Samson Tanimawo BSc · MSc · MBA · PhD
Founder & CEO, Nova AI Ops.
https://novaaiops.com