Performing Container Image Hardening

When to Use

• When building production container images that need minimal attack surface
• When compliance requires CIS Docker Benchmark adherence for container configurations
• When reducing image size to minimize vulnerability exposure from unused packages
• When implementing defense-in-depth for containerized workloads
• When migrating from fat base images to distroless or minimal images

Do not use for runtime container security monitoring (use Falco), for host-level Docker daemon hardening (use CIS Docker Benchmark host checks), or for container orchestration security (use Kubernetes security scanning).

Prerequisites

• Docker or BuildKit for multi-stage builds
• Base image options: distroless, Alpine, slim, or scratch
• Container scanning tool (Trivy) for validation
• CIS Docker Benchmark reference