Practitioners' Perceptions of Security Issues in Software Containers: A Qualitative Study
Maha Sroor, Rahul Mohanani, Teerath Das, Tommi Mikkonen, Sandun Dasanayake · 2024
Software containers have emerged as solutions for developing and deploying software applications. Despite the popularity and portability of containers, there is significant concern about container security, which hinders their adoption. Recent research has made efforts to investigate container security theoretically and experimentally. Meanwhile, software practitioners have also developed practices to improve and maintain container security based on their work experience. However, a notable gap exists in expressing practitioners' viewpoints on container security. Consequently, this study aims to understand practitioners' perceptions of container security and their man-agement strategies in real-world projects. We conducted semi-structured interviews with practitioners across various domains to explore their opinions on container security issues, causes, implications, tools, and practices. Our data analysis reveals emergent patterns in handling container security in real projects. These patterns are presented as a model that highlights the relationships between the major themes and how they affect each other. Our findings reveal that containers offer many advantages to software systems but face challenges in maintaining security. Finally, this research attempts to bridge the knowledge gap between academia and industry by providing a comprehensive understanding of container security issues as perceived by the practitioners and their interrelationships.