Container Security: Flexible and Scalable Protection for Cloud-Native Applications

Today in a fast-paced digital world, container security is one of the most important issues facing companies operating cloud-native applications. Containers offer a clear path for flexibility, scale, and challenges. To safeguard such container workloads, the right security investments (such as rental firewall in the virtual environment) are crucial. By using daemon mode, you get transient secure connections to your containers on a rent-as-you-go basis, without any of the traditional over-priced Fortigate head-end costs.

Container Challenges

Containers are small and meant to be run as isolated microservices. Nevertheless, their dynamism brings security problems that traditional firewalls are not able to solve in the best way. Below are some common issues I hear when it comes to containers:

• Dynamic Workloads: Containers proliferate and disappear in the blink of an eye, making it challenging to maintain security policies.
• Microsegmentation Requirements: Containers frequently exchange traffic within large clusters but microsegmentation requires control over east-west traffic.
• Absence of Native Firewalling: Containers lack native firewalling, potentially rendering the container vulnerable to attack.
• Network Complexity: With various overlays, and virtual networking layers between containers it is harder to monitor the traffic.

Because of the high rate of change on containers, securing them with a static appliance firewall does not work. That’s where cloud- or hybrid-friendly virtual firewalls come in handy.

FortiGate-VM Features

FortiGate-VM is a NGFW that encompasses virtualized versions of the FortiGate next-generation firewall service that can be deployed in your infrastructure. Give businesses the ability to scale their security at the speed they scale their apps with the broadest Set of VMs in the industry available on-demand. Here’s why FortiGate-VM is the right choice for container security:

• Deep Packet Inspection and Threat Intelligence: FortiGate-VM stops known and unknown attacks with real-time updates.
• Microsegmentation Support: Supports fine-grained policies between containers and microservices, preventing lateral access down to zero trust levels.
• Container Platform Integrations: Integrates out-of-the-box with Kubernetes, Docker, and other orchestration tools to enforce policies automatically.
• Easy to Deploy: On-premises, public clouds or hybrid – no problems.
• Automation and API Value: Can be easily managed using APIs and orchestration tools to scale FW instances up and down.

Renting Instances on Demand

Since FortiGate-VM is automation and integration-friendly, you can rent instances on demand which means you pay for what you’ve used. This is perfect for companies who have varying workload.

Orchestration

Smooth orchestration is key to working with containers as efficiently as possible. FortiGate-VM works closely with container orchestrators such as Kubernetes. This brings several benefits:

• Automated Policy Enforcement: Security policies are enforced immediately as containers are made, moved or deleted.
• Scalable Security Layers: Firewalls automatically scale as per your app’s demand without you having to do manual configurations.
• Visibility & Analytics: See what happens to container traffic and potential threats as they move through clusters.
• Reduced overhead: Applications programming interfaces (APIs) and automation tools mean security teams spend less time setting up firewalls and more time thinking strategically.

Organizations can automate the instantiation and deletion of FortiGate-VM firewalls within their containerized infrastructure by renting virtual firewall instances. This provides for safeguarding which is adaptive to evolving conditions.

Billing Model

One of the nice things about renting a FortiGate VM is that billing is flexible. With on-demand rental, rather than the up-front purchase of physical hardware or licenses:

• Cost Saving: Pay what you use in terms of firewall capacity.
• Cost Effective Scaling: Scale instance counts up or down without expensive commitments.
• OpEx Based Instead of CapEx: Security costs are shifted from CapEx to OpEx, positively impacting cash flow.
• Temporary: Ideal to support projects or seasonal peaks.
• Reduced Accounting Complexities: Transparent usage based billing mitigates for unexpected bills.

If you use a container and have no idea when it will be up or down, then it’s OK to rent, exactly the same way that it’s OK for cloud, because your house is constructed to deal with any wind direction, in a manner similar to a tent. Enterprises receive enterprise-grade security without over-provisioning or significant investment.

Conclusion

Container security is also extremely important for applications of today, but old firewalls are not applicable to such dynamic systems. Rent-by-the-hour virtual firewall instances, like FortiGate-VM, enable businesses to get the kind of flexibility, scalability, as well as advanced protection, required to secure container workloads. Optimized for container networking, deep inspection, and orchestration integration, FortiGate-VM virtual firewall rental delivers cost-effective security that won’t break the bank. If your organization is looking to secure container workloads and minimize spend, containerized firewall rental is the right step to stronger cybersecurity protection!