Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) simplifies containerized application management, but ensuring security and compliance remains a challenge. Misconfigurations, excessive IAM permissions, and public-facing services can introduce risks. Cloud Control Point provides proactive governance by enforcing security policies, preventing misconfigurations before deployment, and continuously monitoring ECS workloads to ensure compliance. This blog explores why ECS security matters and how you can integrate Policy-as-Code into your cloud environment.

Why ECS Security and Governance Matter

Many teams adopt ECS for its simplicity, but security cannot be an afterthought. While AWS offers built-in security features, they must be properly configured to ensure robust protection.

Some common security challenges in ECS include:

• IAM Role Misconfigurations: Overly permissive task roles can expose sensitive data or allow unintended actions.
• Public-Facing Services: Exposing ECS services to the internet without proper restrictions increases attack surfaces.
• Insecure Networking: Tasks deployed in the wrong security groups or without proper VPC configurations can lead to unauthorized access.
• Compliance Violations: Regulatory frameworks such as CIS Benchmarks, PCI DSS, and NIST require specific security configurations that need to be enforced.

Without a proactive governance mechanism, these issues can lead to security incidents or compliance failures.

Cloud Control Point for ECS

Cloud Control Point is a policy-based security and governance solution that helps organizations enforce security best practices across ECS workloads. It integrates with AWS environments to provide:

1. Admission Control – Ensures that ECS task definitions, services, and deployments comply with security policies before they are applied.
2. Continuous Scanning – Detects misconfigurations in existing ECS workloads and provides actionable insights.
3. Event-Based Enforcement – Monitors ECS runtime events and applies security policies dynamically to prevent drift.
4. Centralized Visibility – Integrates with Nirmata Control Hub to provide a unified view of policy violations and security posture.

By leveraging Cloud Control Point, teams can ensure continuous governance in production.

Policy Example for AWS ECS Cluster

This policy ensures that AWS ECS Container Insights is enabled because troubleshooting without proper monitoring is like playing “guess what broke” in the dark. Container Insights gives you real-time visibility into cluster performance, tracking CPU, memory, and network usage while helping you detect bottlenecks, failed tasks, and misbehaving services before they cause chaos.

apiVersion: nirmata.io/v1alpha1
kind: ValidatingPolicy
metadata:
  name: validate-ecs-container-insights-enabled
  annotations:
    policies.kyverno.io/title: Validate ECS Container Insights are Enabled
    policies.kyverno.io/category: ECS Best Practices
    policies.kyverno.io/severity: medium
    policies.kyverno.io/description: >-
      Container Insights enhances the operational visibility of ECS clusters, allowing for proactive issue resolution. 
      Enabling this feature ensures that diagnostic information is readily available, contributing to a more efficient and reliable containerized environment.
  labels:
    app: cloud-control-point
spec:
  failureAction: Audit
  scan: true
  rules:
    - name: validate-ecs-container-insights-enabled
      identifier: payload.clusterName
      match:
        all:
        - (metadata.provider): AWS
        - (metadata.service): ECS
        - (metadata.resource): Cluster
      assert:
        all:
        - message: >- 
            ECS container insights must be enabled
          check:
            payload:
              ~.(clusterSettings[?name == 'containerInsights'] || settings[?name == 'containerInsights']):
                value: enabled

Additional AWS ECS Best Practice Policies

In addition to checking for container insights, organizations can enforce other best practices for AWS ECS, such as

• Ensure that ECS containers run in non-privileged mode for better security.
• Ensure that ECS task definitions specify a non-root user when running in host mode.
• Ensure that ECS task definitions enforce a memory hard limit to prevent resource exhaustion.
• Ensure that only allowed container registries are used to prevent untrusted images.
• Ensure that EFS volumes are encrypted to protect sensitive data.

See the complete list of policies here.

By enforcing these policies, organizations can strengthen the security and reliability of their AWS ECS workloads with minimal manual intervention. Nirmata Control Hub streamlines compliance, allowing teams to stay focused on innovation while ensuring robust security and governance.

What’s Next?

Ready to secure and govern your ECS workloads? Get started with Cloud Control Point today and ensure your ECS applications meet the highest security and compliance standards.

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