Nutanix has signed a strategic alliance with RapidFort. The goal of this collaboration, announced during the KubeCon Amsterdam event, is to integrate RapidFort’s automated software supply chain security capabilities with the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) solution, helping customers adopt a “default” security approach across their entire kubernetes-based container ecosystem.
“Nutanix Kubernetes Platform is designed to enable platform teams to run kubernetes in any environment,” said Steve Carter, Director of Product Marketing at Nutanix. “However, as organizations expand their cloud-native Kubernetes-based environments and redirect investments toward AI initiatives, a common friction point emerges: infrastructure teams are looking for control and compliance and developers are looking to release as soon as possible. In that context, security often becomes synonymous with slowness, with teams spending time manually patching vulnerabilities and reviewing endless Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) reports within their Kubernetes deployments.”
Agreement relevant to NKP customers
Having a secure kubernetes platform is important, but the real challenge is often in the application images that run on kubernetes. Traditional vulnerability management is reactive, that is, a problem is detected, fixed, and redeployed to kubernetes. Integrating with RapidFort will change this approach by reducing the attack surface before code even reaches production in kubernetes environments. In this way, NKP clients will be able to take advantage of the following advantages:
- Images reinforced from the source. Access to RapidFort “Curated Near-Zero CVE” images, optimized and minimalist containers designed specifically for kubernetes that eliminate unnecessary packages, code that developers do not use, but that is attractive to attackers.
- Automated remediation. The integration makes it easy to identify and eliminate vulnerabilities throughout the entire Kubernetes software supply chain, avoiding weeks of manual work.
- Consistency. Both in a local data center and in distributed “edge” environments running kubernetes, there will be cryptographic proof of the origin of each library in the stack.
Important technical advantages
The integration between both solutions aligns with the NKP policy control approach in kubernetes. The RapidFort platform brings intelligence at runtime, looking at what a container really needs to run within kubernetes and eliminating everything else. The result is an image reduced to its essentials.
Nutanix Kubernetes Platform is designed to enable platform teams to run kubernetes in any environment
All this, combined with NKP’s ability to manage kubernetes clusters in hybrid environments, allows for a highly resilient deployment chain. It is not just about deploying a kubernetes cluster, but about implementing a verified and hardened environment, in which only authorized and lower risk artifacts run.
Innovate without adding complexity
Whether it’s developing next-generation applications based on GenAI or managing legacy loads in sovereign cloud environments using kubernetes, security cannot be an afterthought. This collaboration agreement seeks to offer NKP customers a more direct path to meeting their compliance requirements within kubernetes without creating additional security issues.
All of these new integrated capabilities will be available to NKP customers later this year.
