Security overview

It is important to understand how to properly secure various aspects of your OpenShift Container Platform cluster.

Container security

A good starting point to understanding OpenShift Container Platform security is to review the concepts in Understanding container security. This and subsequent sections provide a high-level walkthrough of the container security measures available in OpenShift Container Platform, including solutions for the host layer, the container and orchestration layer, and the build and application layer. These sections also include information on the following topics:


  • Which container security measures are provided by the host (RHCOS and RHEL) layer and which are provided by OpenShift Container Platform.

  • How to evaluate your container content and sources for vulnerabilities.


  • How to control access to containers through authentication and authorization.


  • Containerized solutions for API management and SSO.


OpenShift Container Platform auditing provides a security-relevant chronological set of records documenting the sequence of activities that have affected the system by individual users, administrators, or other components of the system. Administrators can configure the audit log policy and view audit logs.


Certificates are used by various components to validate access to the cluster. Administrators can replace the default ingress certificate, add API server certificates, or add a service certificate.

You can also review more details about the types of certificates used by the cluster:

Encrypting data

You can enable etcd encryption for your cluster to provide an additional layer of data security. For example, it can help protect the loss of sensitive data if an etcd backup is exposed to the incorrect parties.

Vulnerability scanning

Administrators can use the Container Security Operator (CSO) to run vulnerability scans and review information about detected vulnerabilities.

Compliance overview

For many OpenShift Container Platform customers, regulatory readiness, or compliance, on some level is required before any systems can be put into production. That regulatory readiness can be imposed by national standards, industry standards, or the organization’s corporate governance framework.

Compliance checking

Administrators can use the Compliance Operator to run compliance scans and recommend remediations for any issues found. The oc-compliance plug-in is an OpenShift CLI (oc) plug-in that provides a set of utilities to easily interact with the Compliance Operator.

File integrity checking

Administrators can use the File Integrity Operator to continually run file integrity checks on cluster nodes and provide a log of files that have been modified.