Chainguard Images

My main use case for Chainguard Containers  is for every container deployment as a best practice, and it has been applied at the compliance level. The use case is specifically for compliance checks and best practices.

A quick, specific example of how I use Chainguard Containers  for compliance checks or best practices in my workflow is that it replaces our normal Docker  images with secure, low-CVE images in production. Traditional images like Docker  Alpine have many vulnerabilities, while Chainguard Containers does not have them. It is minimal, with near to zero CVEs. Teams can use it for API, backend services, and microservices in Kubernetes . The matter here is that it drastically reduces the CVEs, and no manual patching or effort is needed. The practical use case is where it is in Kubernetes , specifically where GKE  workloads use Chainguard Containers for Cloud Run and all the popular services.

The benefit of Chainguard Containers is that it makes development simpler. It makes the development team confident there will not be any bugs or vulnerabilities in the image they are using. It is mainly needed for vulnerabilities, SLAs, security audits, and SOC 2, ISO, and PCI compliance. The image includes SBOM, signature, and provenance metadata, which makes audits much easier.

The best features Chainguard Containers offers include a reduced image size. It removes the shell and the package manager, resulting in a significantly smaller image size compared with a normal image. We can deploy production workloads directly without worrying about security concerns. If we want a strong supply chain for security, we will be using it. Many users are already tired of scanning alerts, so this will be a great thing.

Removing the shell and package manager has positively impacted my team's workflow and deployment speed by making it quite user-friendly, where the developer can touch it without any hesitation. Chainguard Containers are built and pushed from non-patched binaries, with the packages compiled directly from the source. No dependencies or pre-built distro packages like Debian  or Alpine are required, so there are no hidden vulnerabilities. The developer gains full control over what goes inside, and the image size is smaller with fewer vulnerabilities, in fact, zero. It has built-in processes like SBOM, which is Software Bill  of Material generated. The image is cryptographically signed, and provenance is tracked, leading to faster patching, minimal footprint, and best supply chain control.

Chainguard Containers has positively impacted my organization by reducing constant CVE fixing, resolving security versus DevOps conflicts, and minimizing compliance headaches. After implementing secured-by-default containers, there is less effort on fixing vulnerabilities, faster delivery, and better compliance. The impact on security teams includes a lower risk of attack, less panic during audits, and significantly fewer security noises.

A specific outcome we have noted since implementing Chainguard Containers is that for a client who uses more than 200 containers, they previously received vulnerability warnings for every deployment. Once we implemented Chainguard Containers, the vulnerability ratio drastically decreased, from 100 to 30. Nearly 70% of the vulnerability checks have passed. Chainguard Containers are CVE-resistant, which is significant as CVEs represent Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures.

Regarding improvements for Chainguard Containers, during build time, it is fine, but at runtime, there should be something reported. It is not a runtime-friendly solution, and if a service is running, vulnerability attacks can still occur, which it does not prevent.

Many potential improvements are needed, such as integrating AI to detect vulnerabilities. They can manage it in a way that vulnerabilities are resisted during runtime.

Chainguard Containers is stable.

Its scalability allows us to push between 1,000 to 2,000 images, completely dependent on our subscription.

We have not tried Chainguard Containers' customer support, so we have not encountered any errors to report.

Before using Chainguard Containers, we did use Sonar  and Trivy , but wanted to move beyond that due to hosting and scanning each in the pipeline, which has too many bugs and can corrupt our images. To avoid this, we planned to adopt Chainguard Containers.

I am uncertain about the return on investment with Chainguard Containers. I have heard it costs nearly $13,000 per year. When factoring in the setup of tools like Sonar  scanning and Trivy , which costs over $6,000 to $7,000, investing an additional $5,000 for Chainguard Containers provides good support and granular checks on each image, so I do not see it as wasteful; rather, it is a good investment for our startup.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that while I work on implementation and do not manage billing, it is open source and developer-friendly. Although I am not the right person to speak on pricing, the free trial is excellent for up to five container images per organization for production use, without SLA guarantees. This is good for POC, learning, and small workloads. For enterprise, you pay based on the number and type of images, including CVE, SLA patch timelines, full image versioning, and support. Costs depend on those factors, and the most used firms often engage in catalog subscriptions to access the entire catalog. Licensing for images generally falls between 1,000 to 2,000 images, with unlimited pulls and pull standardization.

I did not evaluate other options before choosing Chainguard Containers.

Regarding Chainguard Containers' AI capabilities, my thoughts on its governance and security are that not much is in place, as we have to use other tools to catch vulnerabilities during runtime. Although it has AI, it does not effectively catch all the vulnerabilities.

The accuracy and reliability of the output from Chainguard Containers are below average, but I still give it an average rating of 6.5 to 7 because of its capabilities and its functionality for a developer-friendly approach.

My advice for others looking into using Chainguard Containers is that as a firm working for an insurance company, everything we deploy and provision matters. If you want security at a granular level, Chainguard Containers is a great option. I would rate Chainguard Containers an 8 out of 10 because it is a simple tool, but it can still be enhanced in the future. Even though it is great, there are some lags. We are confident that there will not be any issues during build time, but in runtime, there are some hacks that cannot be tracked, changed, or prevented. If Chainguard Containers can address those runtime issues, that would be great. My overall review rating for Chainguard Containers is 10.

Chainguard Containers  was a tool brought into my enterprise as a proof of concept that we evaluated, but we have not rolled it out for enterprise usage.

Our main use case for Chainguard Containers  during the evaluation period was for hardened images, as we do not have a central source of hardened images for all use cases in the enterprise. Chainguard  was a solution that proposed we could use their offering as a source of pre-hardened or pre-vetted images.

During our evaluation, we were trying to use Chainguard Containers for hardened images such as various types including Debian , UBI, Dynatrace , Nginx, and other similar images. We were attempting to see what Chainguard  offers and then run a scan on them with their tools to see how hardened they are in terms of vulnerabilities.

Based on my evaluation, the best features Chainguard Containers offers are pre-hardened images. They are now adding pre-hardened libraries as well, but the pre-hardened base operating systems are what we were looking for, and Chainguard offers this and does a pretty good job except for the fact that many of their images are Alpine-based, which are not that friendly with Kubernetes  native environments.

I find the quality and security of those pre-hardened images compared to what we were using before to be absolutely solid, as they are minimal images, small in size, and clean.

Chainguard Containers has positively impacted my organization even during the proof of concept phase by improving our security posture. Some of our groups ended up using Chainguard base operating systems for their container images, and that led to improved security posture and fewer vulnerabilities. There was a reduction in vulnerabilities for the teams that were using Chainguard.

The only limitation or challenge that stood out during my evaluation of Chainguard Containers was the fact that it is primarily based on Alpine, which can be tricky to use in native Kubernetes  environments, as we use Tecton primarily, which is a CI/CD pipeline that runs on native Kubernetes.

I am not familiar with Chainguard Containers' AI capabilities.

Regarding the governance and security of those AI features, I was not and am not familiar with the AI features of Chainguard Containers.

I did not have any experience with the accuracy and reliability of output of Chainguard Containers' AI capabilities.

Chainguard Containers is primarily based on Alpine, and most of their images follow this pattern.

I would rate this review an eight overall.