Best Practices for Securing Containers using TotalCloud
In the ever-evolving landscape of IT and security, Qualys has emerged as a beacon of innovation, offering a suite of tools designed to streamline the work of teams responsible for maintaining the security of their organisations' digital assets.
One such offering is the Qualys Unified Dashboard (UD), a comprehensive library of dashboards tailored for IT and security teams. This dashboard brings information from all Qualys applications into a single place for visualization, providing a bird's-eye view of the security posture of your organisation.
The heart of Qualys' Container Security (CS) offering lies in its sensors. These sensors are designed to scan containers for potential vulnerabilities, malware, and secrets. The General Sensor Profile can be configured to re-scan containers as frequently as 12 hours for critical workloads, ensuring that your containers remain secure at all times.
For optimal performance, it is recommended to update the Qualys CS sensor to the latest version. This update not only brings new features and bug fixes, but also remedies sensor vulnerabilities, ensuring that your security measures remain robust.
Qualys provides a wealth of resources to help you troubleshoot any issues that may arise. In addition, they offer a way to collaborate with their support team, ensuring that you receive the assistance you need promptly.
Qualys also boasts a community and a Service Level Agreement, fostering a spirit of collaboration and commitment to its users.
When it comes to managing your sensors, Qualys offers the feature of sensor inactive windows. These windows allow you to pause your sensors during maintenance windows or specific windows, preventing the sensor from generating data during these times.
Qualys retains the Qualys CS data for months by default, but data retention settings can be enforced based on your organisation's requirements.
For those seeking a more proactive approach to security, scheduled reports for container vulnerabilities, image vulnerabilities, secrets, and malware could be invaluable.
The Container Security Sensor Image is available on Docker Hub and is released regularly, almost every month. For those using Helm Charts and GitOps for deploying and upgrading Qualys Container Security efficiently, there are specific tools available to facilitate this process.
The Qualys Query Language (QQL) is a powerful tool that allows you to build custom search queries to fetch information from Qualys databases.
Lastly, Qualys' Container Security API guide can help you develop custom integrations or scheduled tasks for Day 2 operations. Furthermore, you can create custom dashboards using existing widget templates, customising existing widgets, or creating new ones to suit your organisation's needs.
In a significant development, Qualys Container Security is now an integral part of TotalCloud 2.0, providing a comprehensive view of the security posture of containerized applications.
In conclusion, Qualys' Container Security offers a robust and flexible solution for IT and security teams, providing the tools and resources necessary to maintain the security of their organisations' digital assets.
