Best Practices for Pipeline Security Integration

Implement these practices for effective CI/CD security scanning:

# Policy as Code for CI/CD
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: cicd-security-policy
data:
  policy.rego: |
    package docker.security
    
    default allow = false
    
    # Define severity thresholds
    max_critical = 0
    max_high = 5
    max_medium = 20
    
    # Check vulnerability counts
    allow {
        input.vulnerability_summary.critical <= max_critical
        input.vulnerability_summary.high <= max_high
        input.vulnerability_summary.medium <= max_medium
    }
    
    # Require specific labels
    required_labels := {
        "maintainer",
        "version",
        "security.scan"
    }
    
    deny[msg] {
        missing := required_labels - input.labels
        count(missing) > 0
        msg := sprintf("Missing required labels: %v", [missing])
    }
    
    # Base image restrictions
    allowed_base_images := {
        "alpine:3.18",
        "ubuntu:22.04",
        "node:18-alpine"
    }
    
    deny[msg] {
        not input.base_image in allowed_base_images
        msg := sprintf("Base image %s not in allowed list", [input.base_image])
    }

Integrating vulnerability scanning into CI/CD pipelines transforms security from a bottleneck into an enabler. By providing fast, accurate feedback directly in developer workflows, these integrations help teams build secure containers by default. The next chapter explores automating container registry scanning to maintain security for stored images.## Container Registry Scanning Automation

Container registries serve as the central repository for container images in modern DevOps workflows, making them a critical point for security enforcement. While CI/CD pipeline scanning catches vulnerabilities during build time, registry scanning provides ongoing protection for stored images, detecting newly discovered vulnerabilities and ensuring compliance across your entire image inventory. This chapter explores comprehensive strategies for automating container registry scanning using both Trivy and Snyk across popular registry platforms.