Security
May 23, 2022 By Stephen Dominguez 2 min read

IBM Systems Lab Services is excited to help you make sure your containers are secure with the new OpenShift Security Assessment.

Businesses are changing the architectural choices they are making in developing their applications. Instead of using traditional models, such as monolithic development, they are moving to microservices. The heart of microservices is the container — companies such as Netflix and Google are well known for how they have utilized and promoted the use of containers for their services.

If a business has developed an application with containers, then providing that application at significant scale will require container orchestration. Container orchestration provides automation for much of the operational effort required to run containerized applications.  Kubernetes is the well-known open-source container-orchestration system, and Red Hat OpenShift is a commercialized software product derived from Kubernetes. It contains additional features not available from the Kubernetes open-source project.

The OpenShift Security Assessment offering

The IBM OpenShift Security Assessment, offered by IBM Systems Lab Services, is a service that involves checking the security of your OpenShift settings by verifying that they are properly configured.

Security is a priority for any company, which is where an OpenShift Security Assessment is important. Once your company has deployed OpenShift, Lab Services experts verify security settings according to recommendations made by the Center for Internet Security’s (CIS) Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform v4 Benchmark. CIS’s OpenShift benchmark is inspired by the CIS Kubernetes benchmark.

The Lab Services OpenShift Security service lets you know how the deployment of one of your OpenShift clusters compares to the CIS OpenShift benchmark. An IBM expert will document and review with you what OpenShift settings are not configured securely. Most importantly, we help you understand the recommendations that indicate the presence of an increased security risk so that you can take decisive action to mitigate the identified risks.

Saving your organization time and money

It’s true that your organization could access the CIS OpenShift benchmark and assess the security of OpenShift on your own. However, that typically would require 80-120 person hours to accomplish. The OpenShift Security Assessment service only requires 1-4 hours of your time, because much of the work of the assessment is done by IBM in the background.

The following are some of the other benefits you’ll enjoy:

  • This service is free for eligible IBM Power clients: Those who are eligible can request this service at no cost via the Power to Cloud program.
  • Our analysis and interactions are user-friendly: We create a special Microsoft Word document and Excel spreadsheet that makes it easy to understand the extent of the items we are analyzing.
  • Our results are delivered by a technical expert: If you have specific questions that are related to OpenShift security (but not directly answered by the CIS OpenShift benchmark when discussing the testing results), our experts can research answers and follow up on additional items. The technical expert will work with you to ensure that everything is clearly understood.

Learn more

To learn more about how we can help you secure your orchestration platform, contact IBM Systems Lab Services at ibmsls@ibm.com.

Get more details about the IBM OpenShift Security Assessment, offered by IBM Systems Lab Services.

Stephen Dominguez
Systems Lab Services Consultant

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