Kubernetes Security

4 open source tools compared. Sorted by stars. Scroll down for our analysis.

Tool	Stars	Velocity	Language	License	Score
kubescape Kubescape is an open-source Kubernetes security platform for your IDE, CI/CD pipelines, and clusters. It includes risk analysis, security, compliance, and misconfiguration scanning, saving Kubernetes users and administrators precious time, effort, and resources.	11.5k	-	Go	Apache License 2.0	71
falco Cloud Native Runtime Security	9.1k	+31/wk	C++	Apache License 2.0	81
kube-bench Checks whether Kubernetes is deployed according to security best practices as defined in the CIS Kubernetes Benchmark	8.1k	-	Go	Apache License 2.0	71
tetragon eBPF-based Security Observability and Runtime Enforcement	4.8k	-	C	Apache License 2.0	61

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Our Analysis

kubescape11.5k★

Kubescape scans your Kubernetes clusters and manifests for security risks and compliance gaps, checking against frameworks like the NSA and CISA hardening guides, MITRE ATT&CK, and CIS benchmarks. It gives you a risk score and specific fixes. Open source, a CNCF project, free, and one of the more approachable ways into Kubernetes security. You can run it as a CLI for a one-shot scan of a cluster or YAML files, or deploy it in-cluster for continuous monitoring, image scanning, and runtime insights. The CLI is a great starting point: point it at your cluster, get a scored report in a couple of minutes. It covers configuration, RBAC, and vulnerability scanning in one tool. Kubescape is free. ARMO, the company behind it, sells a hosted platform with a dashboard, history, and team features on top. Solo and small teams, the CLI and open source components cover a lot of ground. Larger orgs that want continuous, centralized Kubernetes security across clusters, the ARMO platform is the managed path. The catch: broad coverage means it's a mile wide, and no single tool is the last word on any one area. It's excellent for getting a fast, scored picture of where a cluster stands, but treat it as the starting map, not the final audit, especially next to focused tools like Falco for runtime or a dedicated image scanner.

falco9.1k★

Falco monitors Linux system calls in real time and alerts you when something unexpected happens: a container spawning a shell, a process reading sensitive files, a network connection to an unusual destination. It's a security camera for your Linux kernel. It sees everything a process does because it hooks into the kernel via eBPF. The open source version is free under Apache 2.0. CNCF graduated project. You get real-time threat detection, a rich rule engine, hundreds of pre-built rules for common attack patterns, and output to any alerting system (Slack, PagerDuty, syslog, etc.). Sysdig (the company that created Falco) sells Sysdig Secure, which adds a management UI, compliance dashboards, image scanning, and enterprise support. That's the commercial product. Falco itself has no enterprise tier. Self-hosting is the only option. Install Falco on each host or as a DaemonSet in Kubernetes. The eBPF probe needs a kernel that supports it (5.8+ for best results). Initial setup is straightforward; tuning the rules to reduce false positives is where the real work starts. Solo developers: overkill unless you're running production containers with sensitive data. Small teams: install it on your Kubernetes cluster and configure Slack alerts. Cheap insurance. Growing teams: essential. Runtime security detection is a gap most teams don't fill until something bad happens. The catch: out-of-the-box rules are noisy. You'll get alerts for normal container behavior until you tune the rules for your environment. Budget a few days for tuning, or you'll learn to ignore the alerts, which defeats the purpose.

kube-bench8.1k★

kube-bench checks whether your Kubernetes cluster is configured according to the CIS Kubernetes Benchmark, the industry-standard hardening checklist. It runs the hundreds of checks in that benchmark automatically and tells you what passes, what fails, and how to fix each one. Open source, from Aqua Security, free. It runs as a job or container on your nodes and inspects the actual configuration of the control plane, kubelet, and policies against the benchmark. The output maps directly to CIS recommendations, which makes it the standard tool when an auditor asks whether you meet the benchmark. Setup is straightforward and it's built to run on a schedule. Fully free with no paid tier. It's single-purpose in the best way: it does CIS benchmarking and nothing else, so it pairs naturally with broader tools like Kubescape or a runtime monitor like Falco. Any team that needs to demonstrate CIS compliance for Kubernetes runs this. The catch: it measures against the CIS benchmark, which is a configuration checklist, not a complete security posture. A cluster can pass kube-bench and still have application-level holes, weak RBAC choices the benchmark doesn't judge, or runtime threats it can't see. It answers are we hardened to CIS, not are we secure.

tetragon4.8k★

Tetragon watches what's actually happening inside your Kubernetes workloads at runtime: process executions, file access, network connections, and more, using eBPF to see it all from the kernel with very low overhead. Where a scanner tells you what could go wrong, Tetragon tells you what is happening right now. Open source, from the Cilium project, free. eBPF is the key: it hooks into the Linux kernel to observe and optionally block events without the performance hit of older approaches. You write policies describing what to watch or stop, and Tetragon enforces them in real time, with Kubernetes-aware context so events are tied to pods and namespaces. Running it well takes some depth, both in eBPF concepts and in tuning what you monitor. Tetragon is free. Isovalent, now part of Cisco, sells enterprise Cilium and support that includes Tetragon for large deployments. Solo and small teams, it's powerful but heavier to operate than a scanner, so adopt it when runtime visibility is a real need. Large or security-focused orgs, it's a serious runtime security and observability layer. The catch: this is runtime, not prevention. Tetragon sees and can stop things as they happen, but it won't tell you your manifests are misconfigured or your images are vulnerable, that's what the scanners are for. And the eBPF-and-policy learning curve is real. It's a strong tool, but it's not the first one a small team should reach for.