Plan Defender for Containers Deployment
Implementation Effort: Medium – Requires planning across Kubernetes environments, onboarding clusters, and configuring sensors and policies.
User Impact: Low – Deployment is handled by platform and security teams; end users are not directly affected.
Overview
Planning a deployment of Microsoft Defender for Containers involves preparing your Kubernetes environments (Azure, AWS, GCP, and on-premises) to support container security capabilities such as vulnerability assessment, runtime threat detection, and security posture management. Defender for Containers integrates with Azure Arc for hybrid and multicloud clusters and supports both agent-based and agentless monitoring.
Key planning steps include:
- Enable the Defender for Containers plan in Microsoft Defender for Cloud using the Azure portal, REST API, or ARM templates 1.
- Deploy the Defender sensor to Kubernetes clusters to enable runtime threat detection and telemetry collection.
- Configure Azure Policy add-ons to enforce governance and collect control plane data.
- Integrate with container registries (e.g., Azure Container Registry, Amazon ECR, GCP Artifact Registry) for vulnerability scanning.
- Review the containers support matrix to ensure compatibility with your cloud provider and Kubernetes version 2.
- Enable gated deployment to secure your container software supply chain by validating images before deployment 3.
This planning ensures that all container workloads are protected from build to runtime, aligning with the "Assume Breach" and "Verify Explicitly" principles of Zero Trust.