In recent years, the popularity of Kubernetes deployments has surged—as has the prevalence of security risks associated with the technology. Red Hat’s State of Kubernetes Security for 2023 reveals that 67 percent of organizations have encountered delays in application deployments due to Kubernetes-related security issues. Additionally, 37 percent have experienced significant revenue or customer losses stemming from Kubernetes security incidents.

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In today's cloud technology landscape, Kubernetes is widely used to orchestrate containerized applications, enabling deployment, scaling, and management. Applications in a Kubernetes environment benefit from high availability and resource efficiency, making them ideal for cloud-native development. However, challenges with filesystem consistency due to the ephemeral nature of containers can lead to discrepancies when they are restarted or modified.

On March 29, 2024, Red Hat disclosed CVE-2024-3094 (a.k.a XZ vulnerability) scoring a critical CVSS rating of 10. Stemming from a supply chain compromise it affects the latest iterations of XZ tools and libraries. The CVE was identified by a software engineer following the discovery of performance issues in SSH connections. This led to the exposure of a major supply chain attack where a compromised library was inserted into sshd and exploited during the authentication process.

On March 29th, 2024, a backdoor in a popular package called XZ Utils was announced on the Openwall mailing list. This utility includes a library called liblzma which is used by SSHD, a critical part of the Internet infrastructure used for remote access. When loaded, the CVE-2024-3094 affects the authentication of SSHD potentially allowing intruders access regardless of the method.

DevSecOps is a collaborative practice that incorporates security into the development and delivery of software. DevSecOps encourages a culture where security, development, and operations teams collaborate closely; this collaboration ensures that security considerations are understood and implemented by everyone involved in the software development lifecycle.

The SEC’s new ‘Cybersecurity Risk Management, Strategy, Governance, and Incident Disclosure’ rule (issued on July 26, 2023) has public companies, notably smaller companies, worrying about having enough cybersecurity expertise to run a security program consistent with SEC requirements.

The SEC cybersecurity disclosure rules have put a spotlight on the issue of cybersecurity within organizations. The core of the rules and related guidance can be found in the article “Assess Your Readiness Now for the SEC Cybersecurity Disclosure Rules.“ The SEC cybersecurity disclosure rules should help build momentum around the importance of governance and risk management, relevant expertise, and timely incident disclosure that are fundamental to cybersecurity programs.

Back in August 2023, Checkmarx and Sysdig announced a new partnership. This collaboration enables customers of both Checkmarx and Sysdig to leverage the comprehensive visibility offered by Sysdig Runtime Insights to get even more value from the Checkmarx One application security platform.