In a traditional context, developers write code on their local machines or specific computing environments. When this code is transferred to a new environment, like a production server or another developer’s system, differences in software versions or library incompatibility often cause bugs and errors.
Today, containerization has fundamentally altered application building and deployment—it’s a virtualization technique that packages an app’s components into a single, portable unit called a container. This process enables it to run independently of the host operating system and consistently across environments.
However, with this paradigm shift comes an increased attack surface, particularly during the runtime phase, when containers interact with system resources, the network, and each other. And when there’s an oversight, data breaches, operational disruption, and reputational harm occur.
Unfortunately, in 2023, 85% of organizations using containers experienced cybersecurity incidents like privilege escalations and zero-day exploits, with 32% occurring during runtime. That’s where container runtime security tools enter the picture. They grant visibility into what’s happening inside containers. They can stop attackers from injecting malicious code into host images and monitor registries to track abnormal access patterns in real time.
So, if ensuring container runtime protection is at the top of your list, you must read further. This guide explores the top container runtime security tools, highlighting their key features and capabilities. We also delve into critical factors to consider when evaluating options, helping you select the best solution for your organization. But first, let’s answer a simple question.
What is Container Runtime Security?
Container runtime security refers to mechanisms implemented to safeguard containers while they’re active in a production environment.
It includes monitoring and responding to malicious behaviors, policy violations, and abnormal activities, helping prevent security compromises as containers interact with system resources, the underlying kernel, and networks.
Need for Container Runtime Security Tools
Many organizations have siloed teams working across different countries, and time zones, and using varied tools and policy frameworks. In a cloud-native environment, with interactions across numerous entities, a lack of unified security policies can create the perfect setup for a potential security breach.
Container security tools aim to minimize all such security risks associated with running containerized applications. They come with many benefits, including:
1. Dynamic and Ephemeral Environments
Containers are inherently short-lived and dynamic, often existing only for a few minutes. Traditional security approaches, designed for long-running virtual machines or physical servers, thus struggle to keep up.
Container runtime security tools continuously monitor container behavior and apply protections in real time, regardless of how fleeting the container’s lifespan may be.
2. Compliance and Continuous Audibility
Granular and round-the-clock visibility into container activities is crucial if your application is used in regulated industries like banking, healthcare, and government.
Container runtime security tools generate detailed audit logs documenting every system interaction, network connection, and file access within the container. These logs aid compliance and are a key forensic tool in incident response scenarios.
3. Kernel-Level Threats and Container Escapes
Since your containers share the same kernel with the host, this opens the door to a range of kernel-level exploits, such as buffer overflow, NULL pointer dereference, and arbitrary code execution.
Runtime security tools intercept and analyze system calls to prevent containers from accessing restricted kernel resources or performing dangerous operations.
4. Microservices and Increased Attack Surface
Microservices architectures decompose applications into multiple, loosely coupled services, each running in its own container, which increases the number of potential attack vectors. Without container runtime security tools, a compromise in one container could cascade into a wider breach across multiple services.
5. Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) and Lateral Movement
Attackers often target containerized environments using sophisticated, long-term strategies like APTs. Container runtime security tools identify abnormal patterns indicative of lateral movement, such as unexpected network communications or unauthorized access. This enables you to contain threats before they escalate.
Container Runtime Security Tools Landscape in 2025
With so many options in the market, the task of selecting one that’s best suited to your needs becomes daunting. But don’t fret—because we’ve done our research and listed ten container runtime security tools that can make a difference.
#1 SentinelOne Singularity™ Cloud Security
SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is a unified Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) that secures and protects all your assets across public, private, on-prem, and hybrid environments.
It encompasses critical features such as Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), and Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) for robust workload defense.
Additionally, it includes Cloud Detection and Response (CDR), AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM), External Attack Surface Management (EASM), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM), Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) Scanning, and Vulnerability Management, offering end-to-end protection for your cloud environments.
SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security’s cutting-edge analytics capabilities enable you to proactively identify and manage threats and vulnerabilities, such as ransomware, zero-days, and fileless attacks, all of which can be significant threats in containerized environments.
Platform at a Glance
Singularity Cloud Workload Security (CWS) is a Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) that defends containerized workloads across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and private data centers by leveraging AI-powered threat detection and machine-speed response.
You also gain access to a rich forensic history of workload telemetry and data logs required for investigating incidents and slashing response times.
SentinelOne’s Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM) solution protects your Kubernetes clusters and workloads, reducing human error and minimizing manual intervention.
It enables you to enforce security standards, such as Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) policies, and automatically detect, assess, and remediate policy violations across the Kubernetes environment. It also streamlines cloud-native security and aligns with frameworks like the Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmarks.
Features:
- Full telemetry and process-level forensics: Gaining OS process-level telemetry for container workloads is vital for incident response and forensic analysis. This feature boosts visibility into runtime activity, making detecting and investigating suspicious behavior within containers easier.
- Secrets and credential management: Identifying hardcoded secrets across repositories and preventing credential leakage is essential in containerized and CI/CD environments, where management can often be challenging. This capability minimizes the risk of credential exposure, a common vulnerability in container deployments.
- Agentless and agent-based options: Singularity’s hybrid approach of offering both agentless insights and runtime agents for real-time response ensures flexible deployment options. This is advantageous, as not all containerized environments allow agents, but runtime agents can provide deeper and more immediate protection where permitted.
- Zero-day attack simulation: Simulating zero-day attacks adds an extra layer of testing security resilience in real-world scenarios, equipping you to address gaps without the risk of actual compromise.
- Unified cloud view: You can evaluate cloud security posture across multi-cloud environments. Singularity offers a single multi-cloud console, customizable enterprise dashboards, and business intelligence reporting features.
- Custom policies: The ability to create custom policies, particularly for container runtime security and KSPM, allows you to adapt controls to specific runtime behaviors.
Core Problems that SentinelOne Solves
- Discovers unknown container deployments and fixes misconfigurations
- Stops malware spread and eliminates advanced persistent threats (APTs)
- Resolves inefficient security workflows for containerized environments
- Identifies vulnerabilities in CI/CD pipelines, container registries, and repositories
- Prevents data exfiltration, malicious code injection, and lateral movement within containers
- Eliminates data silos and addresses multi-compliance requirements across industries
Here’s a look at how one client describes the valuable impact SentinelOne has had on their vulnerability management process:
“Singularity Cloud Security includes proof of exploitability in its evidence-based reporting. That is critically important because you might be inundated with results when you run scans or use the vulnerability scanning tool, especially in large environments. Analysts take a long time to go back through and validate whether it is a true or false positive. Singularity Cloud Security can eliminate a lot of false positives or almost all of them, and we can focus on something that is a true issue, as opposed to wasting our time and resources,” said Andrew W., VP – Information Technology, Financial Services Firm on PeerSpot Reviews
See Singularity Cloud Security’s ratings and review counts on peer-review platforms like Gartner Peer Insights and PeerSpot.
#2 Trend Micro Cloud One™
Trend Micro Cloud One is a security services platform for multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments. It provides cloud builders with features such as file scanning, network security, and cyber risk assessments to protect business-critical applications.
It also offers full-lifecycle container security, including runtime image scanning and admission control. It automatically isolates, terminates, and alerts containers and pods that violate security protocols.
Features:
- Applies a set of predefined rules aligned with the MITRE ATT&CK (a cyberattack classification framework) to spot common container attack tactics
- Flags any changes in a container’s state that differ from the original image baseline
- Applies runtime security even to tainted Kubernetes nodes by using tolerations, which allow pods to run on nodes with specific restrictions
- Supports Linux 5.8+ kernels using modern Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF)
Assess Trend Micro Cloud One’s credibility by examining its rеviеws and ratings on Gartner and G2.
#3 Palo Alto Networks Cloud
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Cloud is a cloud-native security platform.
It gives continuous and up-to-date views of the container posture at runtime and a thorough history of previous scans by leveraging 400+ out-of-the-box and customizable compliance checks (PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, NIST).
It also enables controlling the alert and blocking severity level for individual services and groups of services during runtime.
Features:
- Tracks incidents on a system, including crypto mining, malware downloads, suspicious program files (ELF headers), and flow hijack attempts
- Manages Docker and Kubernetes access, provides secrets management integration, and supports Open Policy Agent
- Aggregates data from 30+ upstream sources to minimize false positives and ensure accurate vulnerability information
- Monitors and audits SSH interactive session commands to detect potential misuse or attacks
Check out Gartner and PeerSpot reviews to see what users have to say about Palo Alto Networks Cloud.
#4 StackRox
StackRox is an open-source full-lifecycle Kubernetes security solution. It performs risk analyses of the container environment by chronologically tracking runtime events like process executions. It captures process executions to provide visibility and prioritize responses to incidents.
Features:
- Uses a Collector component that gathers runtime data from every kernel module or eBPF probes
- Applies policies using Boolean operators, combining different criteria for runtime enforcement
- Allows multi-layered network segmentation to minimize the lateral movement of threats within clusters
- Supports development workflow with custom scripts and environment variables
Explore G2 and PeerSpot reviews and ratings on GetApp for further insights into StackRox’s capabilities.
#5 Red Hat
Red Hat offers a suite of products that delivers robust runtime protection for Kubernetes environments.
It monitors process executions, network flows, and privilege escalations within active containers and promptly isolates or terminates malicious workloads upon detection.
Secures Kubernetes workloads across hybrid and multi-cloud platforms, including Red Hat OpenShift, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).
Features:
- Uses rules, allowlists, and baselining to identify suspicious activity
- Scans and evaluates system-level events against CIS benchmarks, NIST, PCI, and HIPAA with interactive dashboards
- Ranks all your deployments by risk level, using context from Kubernetes’ declarative data, to prioritize remediation
- Integrates with your CI/CD pipelines and image registries to provide continuous scanning and assurance of containers
Evaluate Red Hat’s G2 and Gartnеr Pееr Insights on PeerSpot to see what the product can do.
#6 Sysdig
Sysdig is a comprehensive monitoring tool that provides deep visibility across containerized environments and systems.
It secures runtime with out-of-the-box managed policies based on Falco and Machine Learning (ML). It automates compliance and governance with OPA policies. Sysdig also offers native Kubernetes integration and is DevOps-friendly.
Features:
- Tells you what happened in a container and why with a detailed audit trail
- Flags new Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) immediately and automatically prioritizes action using runtime contexts
- Performs forensic analysis on containers, even after they’ve been terminated for investigating incident causes
- Blocks risky images and fixes configuration and permissions to ensure they haven’t drifted or deviated from trusted images
Look at Sysdig’s ratings and reviews on PeerSpot and G2 for more information.
#7 Aqua Security
Aqua Security is a CNAPP that offers full lifecycle security for containerized apps and microservices across cloud environments.
To ensure runtime security, it scans container images based on a constantly updated stream of aggregate sources of vulnerability data (CVEs, vendor advisories, and proprietary research), minimizing the occurrence of false positives.
Features:
- Applies virtual patches to contain complex vulnerabilities temporarily, safeguarding runtime environments while awaiting fixes
- Blocks unauthorized runtime connections and high-risk network paths within Kubernetes clusters, namespaces, deployments, and nodes
- Limits the “blast radius” of attacks by segmenting network connections, such as frontend to backend or payment service to the database, based on application identity and context
- Integrates with your existing enterprise vaults, such as HashiCorp, CyberArk, AWS KMS, or Azure Vault, and transparently updates, revokes, and rotates secrets with no need to restart containers
Evaluate Aqua Security’s functionalities with PeerSpot and Gartner Peer Insights reviews and ratings.
#8 Lacework
Lacework FortiCNAPP is a unified, AI-driven platform that secures everything from code to cloud, all from a single vendor.
It continuously monitors node, container, and K8s runtime activity and detects malicious behavior that may indicate container escape, lateral movement, and more. FortiCNAPP integrates smoothly into DevOps workflows. Fortinet acquired Lacework in August 2024.
Features:
- Visualizes and traces API calls between the source IP address, Kubernetes, and AWS groups and usernames
- Performs fast on-demand scans of container images or schedules every 15 minutes using auto-polling
- Intelligently queries Polygraph using multiple terms like actions, namespace, and resource names to focus on specific activity paths
- Comprehensively scans your Kubernetes clusters for risks like unexpected container-to-container communication or High CPU usage by non-critical container
Check out G2 and PeerSpot reviews and ratings to see what users have to say about Lacework
#9 Anchore
Anchore is a solution for organizations with DevSecOps or compliance programs to find and fix container vulnerabilities
It performs scans in CI/CD pipelines, registries, and Kubernetes platforms to promptly identify and mitigate malware in containers. Anchor also offers 100% API coverage and fully documented APIs, enabling developers to work seamlessly with the tools they already use.
Features:
- Defines flexible policies prioritizing vulnerabilities based on severity or available fixes
- Automates alerts in active containers through integrations with GitHub, JIRA, Slack, and more
- Helps correct misidentified metadata (or results) with a “corrections and hints” feature
- Gives an inventory of all components for each container image and scan with Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)
Explore SlashDot and Gartner feedback and ratings on PeerSpot for insights into Anchore.
#10 Tigera
Tigera is a plug-and-play container security platform.
It secures access from individual pods in Kubernetes clusters to external resources, including databases, third-party cloud APIs, and SaaS tools. Tigera identifies application-layer attacks and known suspicious IPs/domains with a workload-centric WAF, IDS, and IPS solution.
It also complies with regulatory and custom compliance frameworks, including SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, etc.
Features:
- Customizes packet capture to runtime traffic requirements while restricting access to specific namespaces and endpoints based on RBAC
- Detects zero-day threats using advanced extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) probes to collect data and analyze suspicious behavior across processes, file systems, and system calls
- Views all active and inactive security policies for the Kubernetes cluster with a hierarchy based on roles and permissions
- Creates accurate CIS benchmark reports to identify Kubernetes misconfigurations
Read these reviews on Gartnеr Pееr Insights and PeerSpot and form an informed opinion about what Tigera can do.
How to Choose the Right Container Runtime Security Tool
Your choice directly influences how efficiently you’d be able to maintain a secure and efficient infrastructure. The tool should easily meet real-time security demands, integrate with your orchestration systems, and scale with your containerized workloads.
Here are five essential capabilities to prioritize when finalizing from a list of container runtime security tools.
1. Syscall and Process-Level Monitoring
You need a tool that captures and analyzes syscalls at the kernel level, giving insights into every action a container takes. This is especially critical for detecting attempts to exploit vulnerabilities within the host or orchestrator, such as tampering with sensitive host resources.
Therefore, look for options that leverage syscall tracing and eBPF architectures for OS process-level visibility with no kernel dependencies.
2. Behavioral Whitelisting and Anomaly Detection
Select a platform that goes beyond simple signature-based detection. It should be able to establish a behavioral baseline for your containers, identifying deviations from expected processes in real time. Whitelisting legitimate actions while flagging anomalies reduces noise and ensures only genuine threats trigger alerts or enforcement actions.
3. Network Segmentation and Micro-Segmentation
Given the distributed nature of modern containerized environments, your solution should apply strict network segmentation to isolate containers from unnecessary communication channels, such as outbound internet access or cloud provider APIs and metadata services.
Micro-segmentation is equally important in this context as it enables you to control intra-cluster traffic and minimize the blast radius if one container is compromised.
4. Scalability and Performance Impact
The tool must be able to scale with your containerized applications without degrading performance. Choose a tool that minimizes resource usage, operates efficiently across distributed clusters, and can handle growth in container usage without causing slowdowns or requiring excessive overhead.
5. Policy-Driven Access Controls and Compliance
Your chosen solution should allow for customizable policies to restrict unauthorized access, enforce the least privilege, and monitor for compliance violations against standards like PCI-DSS, GDPR, and HIPAA. Automated auditing and reporting help maintain compliance as your container usage evolves.
Conclusion
As organizations increasingly rely on containerized environments, ensuring their security during runtime is important to maintain the integrity of both applications and the infrastructure.
As we’ve learned in this guide, SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is a leading solution in this space. It’s designed to protect containers without compromising on performance or operational complexity. And the best part is its capabilities scale with your container security posture requirements.
Therefore, avoid potential risks with SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security. Book a free live demo today to learn more.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. How do I secure container runtime?
Begin with a minimal base image to reduce vulnerabilities tied to unused components. Avoid running containers as root—using a dedicated, lower-privileged user limits what the container can access. Regularly updating images also ensures you’re not exposed to known vulnerabilities.
Access control is essential; only specific users and processes should interact with the runtime. Therefore, strict policies should be enforced with seccomp, AppArmor, or SELinux, which restrict system calls and mitigate potential attack vectors.
2. What are all the container runtimes?
Several popular container runtimes are available, including Docker, CRI-O, runs, Kata Containers, and Postman. Each runtime interacts with the container engine and the host kernel in different ways, but all require runtime security measures.
3. Why is container runtime security important?
Containers in execution are exposed to real-time threats like Denial-of-Service (DoS), container escapes, and resource hijacking, which can compromise your entire infrastructure. Runtime security ensures your running containers are constantly monitored for anomalies and unauthorized activities.
4. Which tool is used for container runtime security?
While many container runtime security tools are on the market, SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security stands out. It offers protection for containerized workloads during production with features like AI-powered threat detection, policy enforcement, and autonomous response and recovery.
5. Which tool helps identify the security issues in the runtime environment?
To detect security issues in your runtime environment, you can count on SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security. It provides comprehensive visibility into container behaviors and system interactions in real time, enabling you to detect malicious activities and take immediate action to contain them.