News
Apcera Delivers Pervasive Security, Visibility and Control for Docker Workloads; Grants Developers Permission to Innovate
July 2015 by Marc Jacob
A recent Gartner report found that the absence of authorization controls in today’s container systems means that container operations security cannot be guaranteed. Addressing this critical industry concern, Apcera announced that it now facilitates secure deployment of Docker and other containerized workloads in production, ensuring that enterprises can detect workload vulnerabilities at the most granular level.
"The increasing complexity of IT infrastructure combined with the massive transformation in the way microservices are developed and deployed is placing ITOps teams at massive risk because they have no enforceable policy control," said Jim Reno, Apcera chief architect for security. "Since day one Apcera has advocated comprehensive security, policy and governance as key components of modern IT infrastructure — it’s what our customers benefit from most and what we bring to the Open Container Initiative. Our mission is to push the envelope for what new technologies like containers are capable of doing and in turn, spur innovation within the ecosystem."
As a founding member of the Open Container Initiative (OCI), Apcera adapts a workflow that’s policy-based, meeting enterprise requirements like compliance and security in Docker production environments without fail. Apcera ties policy and enforcement together so that ITOps have transparent visibility, control and security via a single fabric that overlays the complexity of a microservices IT infrastructure. With policy and trust at the core, ITOps can confidently provide developers with permission to continuously innovate.
"You can’t cut corners in security for the sake of automation. It’s essential that trust, policy and governance are the foundation of multi-cloud environments so accidents simply can’t happen," said Derek Collison, Apcera CEO. "We’re committed to providing ITOps with peace of mind knowing that Docker and other containerized workloads are running on a secure, governed platform."
As enterprise developers increasingly consider Docker for use in enterprise production environments, concern from ITOps about workload security from development to production also grows. Rather than forego Docker in certain enterprise scenarios, Apcera bridges the development-production gap and enables workloads to smoothly run in enterprise production environments. Apcera offers unprecedented workload security and speed through the following capabilities:
Define, customize and enforce policies: Enterprises can set policies based on multiple dimensions — such as user, namespace, workload, cloud, resources, services and other factors — to achieve high levels of flexibility, automation and compliance. For example, a certain Docker image may be allowed in a development environment, but prohibited in production. The staging process can also be customized to include additional security checks for malware and other vulnerabilities, like zero-day exploits.
Ensure control and security of all workloads: Through robust security mechanisms, Apcera delivers complete control over any running workload, including Docker. Enterprises can ensure that all Docker containers are run securely by governing network ingress and egress of Docker workloads, using ephemeral, one-time use credentials for inter-workload communication and providing context-aware and attribute-based access control.
Easily orchestrate and scale across the hybrid cloud: Enterprises can control the placement and scheduling of Docker workloads across multi-cloud environments. With policy at the core, ongoing software management updates are handled seamlessly so that enterprise applications experience zero downtime.
Enable workload visibility and auditing: Apcera governs specific Docker workload permissions and keeps an audit trail for every action in the environment. ITOps can quickly answer questions such as, "What does this Docker workload depend on?", "What does it talk to?" and "When did it perform a specific action?" through complete visibility into Docker workload package dependencies and service connections.
