An Insight from A Programmer’s Perspective on Cloud Container Security Architecture

Abstract

In today’s cloud solution deployments, an important question to consider is whether your development and delivery infrastructure is genuinely secure when using standard security scanning methods and depending on the security protocols of major data providers like AWS, Google, Microsoft Azure, and Kubernetes for application deployment. The references analyzed on common threats in cloud environments and existing solutions, instantiated a need for a survey among 50 software professionals with varied experience in cloud and traditional security to be conducted. The findings highlighted the need for the ranking of common cloud threats in software development for cloud platforms by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) analysis. The results indicate that safeguarding cloud environments demands a multifaceted approach that addresses the nuanced challenges posed by out-of-date applications, operating system vulnerabilities, and third-party apps, all while remaining vigilant against other miscellaneous threats. Notably, third-party applications, while speeding up software delivery, pose significant security risks. This supports the “shifting left” paradigm, which emphasizes integrating security early in the development cycle. Additionally, the importance of a protective layer between hosts and containers through a common response protocol is determined. Docker accounts for 54.7% of the total deployment, showing that more than half of the respondents deployed container images using Docker. With values of 0.526 with λ = 0.5 of FAHP (Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process), experts were either not sure or declared containers as non-repudiable, showing that programmers do not know if the container is the one it poses to be.