Highlights –

  • The existing security tools were complex and, thus, required a commercial solution to manage the issues.
  • There are a lot of competitors of Kubescape, but it leads the market for some of the differentiated features.

ARMO, a Tel Aviv-based company, announced that it had raised USD 30 million in Series A funding for Kubescape, the first fully open-source Kubernetes security platform.

The solution can scan Kubernetes deployments for misconfigurations and vulnerabilities across the complete software development cycle, calculate risk immediately, put light on risk trends, and suggest changes to the configuration files.

In other words, Kubescape aims to offer enterprises a single pane of glass to secure the Kubernetes environment, which can further be used by security teams to scan for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. They will no longer have to rely on a disparate patchwork of isolated open-source security tools.

Why the need for a Kubernetes security solution?

Undoubtedly, open-source tools for Kubernetes security exist; these tools have been siloed, and often designed for individual jobs, rather than being a complete security solution. The high number of these security tools has increased the complexity for human analysts.

“One of the main issues with Kubernetes security today is that while the developers who are responsible for securing Kubernetes are most comfortable working with open-source tools — enjoying the flexibility, transparency, and adaptability they offer — the comprehensive security tools that can do everything they need for K8s are proprietary closed-source solutions,” said co-founder and CEO of ARMO, Shauli Rozen.

“Today in order to achieve an end-to-end K8s security solution, you basically have two options: The first is to enroll in a commercial solution that you have to register and will have to pay for eventually. The second is to cobble together an end-to-end solution by combining numerous and fragmented open-source utilities and tools that must then be integrated, are complex to monitor and manage and require a large amount of effort to generate synergy,” Rozen said.

ARMO thought to provide a unified open-source Kubernetes security platform that integrates with other DevOps tools and allows security teams to solve all kinds of security issues. One feature that supports this is assisted remediation, which can show users where Kubernetes resources have failed and the root cause, down to the specific line in the resource definition file, with the platform offering to fix and even add missing lines if needed.

The Kubernetes security market

ARMO is a part of the global container and Kubernetes security market that researchers valued at USD 714 in 2020. It is anticipated that the value will go up to USD 8.24 billion by 2023 as more and more organizations seek solutions to manage misconfigurations, security issues, and vulnerabilities.

The vendor is competing against a few established competitors, including Palo Alto Networks with Prisma Cloud, which offers Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Cloud Workload Protection (CWP) for hosts, containers, and serverless deployments in Kubernetes environments.

Another competitor is Aqua Security. It offers a Kubernetes Security Posture Management Solution designed to protect and ensure the compliance of K8 applications with security assessments and automated compliance monitoring.

The prime difference between the newly introduced Kubescape tool and other existing solutions is that the former is an open-source tool, allowing developers from the user community to render their knowledge and expertise to enhance the solution over the long term.