The latest research conducted by StackRox with 390 IT and security professionals in comparison with their six months back report based on 230 expert respondents, highlights the state of container and Kubernetes deployments, as security remains a top concern in container strategies. It also showcased the ongoing adoption trends around Kubernetes and newer technologies such as service mesh and functions-as-a-service.

StackRox’s study has highlighted these following findings:

The Kubernetes Adoption and Market Share - The research saw that the Kubernetes adoption and market share has catapulted in a span of just six months; a little over half (57%) were using Kubernetes in any of its forms, but today, 86% of the organizations are using Kubernetes.

Importance of Containerized Apps – The research stated that the Container security is still a big concern with inadequate investment in security dominating the list of concerns with company’s container strategy. And it has also seen people getting more aware of the benefits that containerized apps deliver to their businesses.

User-driven Misconfigurations as the Greatest Risk – Organizations are considering user-driven misconfigurations and exposed Kubernetes dashboards or metadata as their biggest source of risk. Within the span of 6 months (54% to 60%), more of the respondents identified misconfigurations and accidental exposures as their biggest security concern.

Hybrid Environments are Becoming Standard – According to the study, the last 6 months span has seen an increase (40% to 53%) of respondents who are running in hybrid mode. And, the organizations running containers only on-premises has considerably dropped nearly by half (from 31% to just 17%), while cloud-only deployments have remained steady.

Vulnerability Management and Compliance as the Top Security Use Cases - With more than half of the respondents citing demand for a rich feature set which spans over DevOps and security activities, shows that organizations expect both broad and deep functionality in their container and Kubernetes security platforms.

Increase in the Containers Running in Production - In the last 6 months, more than 50% of the organization’s containers running in production has increased (13% to 22%) at a growth rate of 70%.  During the same span, those running less than 10% of their containers in production have fallen from 52% to 39%.