Key features
- Container scanning — image vulnerability, malware, secrets, and misconfiguration scanning pre-deployment
- Kubernetes runtime protection — behavioural monitoring and policy enforcement on production container workloads
- Supply chain security — CI/CD pipeline integrity monitoring and container image provenance verification
- IaC security — Terraform, Helm, and Kubernetes manifest security scanning before deployment
- Registry integration — scanning across ECR, GCR, Docker Hub, and APAC container registry deployments
- Compliance — CIS Kubernetes Benchmark, NSA Kubernetes Hardening Guide, and NIST compliance assessment
- VM protection — agentless virtual machine vulnerability scanning alongside container workload coverage
Best for
- APAC DevSecOps teams managing containerised production workloads on Kubernetes in AWS, GCP, or Azure
- Platform engineering teams wanting container security integrated into CI/CD build pipelines from image creation
- APAC organisations with supply chain security requirements needing container provenance and pipeline integrity monitoring
- Security teams wanting runtime protection against zero-day and supply chain attacks on production Kubernetes clusters
Limitations to know
- ! Aqua enterprise pricing requires significant budget — evaluate Trivy open-source for container image scanning at lower cost
- ! Kubernetes runtime protection requires agent deployment on cluster nodes — adds operational overhead that Wiz agentless does not
- ! Full CNAPP coverage (runtime + scanning + supply chain) requires careful feature set evaluation — not all Aqua features are included in base licensing
- ! APAC Kubernetes environments on managed services (EKS, GKE, AKS) have different agent deployment constraints — verify runtime protection compatibility before commitment
About Aqua Security
Aqua Security is a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) that provides APAC DevSecOps teams with container image security scanning, Kubernetes runtime protection, infrastructure as code (IaC) security scanning, and software supply chain security — covering the full container application lifecycle from developer workstation through production Kubernetes runtime.
Aqua's container image scanning — which analyses Docker and OCI container images for OS vulnerabilities, application package CVEs, malware, exposed secrets, and misconfigured container configurations before images are pushed to registries — enables APAC DevSecOps teams to prevent vulnerable or malicious container images from reaching production Kubernetes clusters. Container image vulnerability scanning integrated into APAC CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins) blocks deployments that attempt to push images with critical vulnerabilities — enforcing the same pipeline security gate model that SonarQube quality gates enforce for code quality.
Aqua's Kubernetes runtime protection — which deploys a security agent on Kubernetes nodes and monitors container behaviour against defined security policies (enforce read-only filesystem, block execution of unexpected binaries, alert on network connection to known malicious IPs) — detects and prevents active attacks against APAC production Kubernetes workloads that pre-deployment scanning cannot prevent. Container image scanning catches known vulnerabilities before deployment; runtime protection catches zero-day exploits, supply chain attacks, and insider threats that manifest as anomalous container behaviour after deployment.
Aqua's software supply chain security — which scans build pipelines for compromise indicators, verifies image provenance through cryptographic signing, and monitors CI/CD pipeline configurations for security misconfigurations — addresses the APAC DevSecOps concern that supply chain attacks target the build and deployment pipeline rather than the application code directly. SolarWinds-style supply chain attacks compromise the build pipeline to inject malicious code into legitimate software; Aqua's supply chain security monitors the pipeline for these compromise patterns.
Aqua's IaC security scanning — which analyses Terraform, Helm, Kubernetes manifests, and Dockerfile configurations for security misconfigurations before they are deployed — provides APAC platform teams with the pre-deployment security check for infrastructure code that Aqua's container scanning provides for application images. A Helm chart that grants excessive RBAC permissions, a Kubernetes deployment manifest with a privileged container, or a Terraform configuration that creates a public S3 bucket are all caught by Aqua IaC scanning before deployment.
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