Containers

ActiveState Secure Containers - Introduction

ActiveState secured containers eliminate the complexity of building and maintaining secure container images. Unlike basic base images, our managed containers are minimized, hardened, use open source components with minimal vulnerabilities, and can be customized using our vetted catalog of over 40 million open-source components. Each container is assembled using our automated secure build system, rebuilt regularly, and includes signed SBOMs and a standard vulnerability remediation SLA. With support for popular languages like Python, Java, and Node.js, and integration-ready images on Docker Hub, ActiveState provides a secure, maintenance-free foundation for your CI/CD pipelines—so you can focus on development, not container security.

Best Practices for Container Security

Why Use an ActiveState Managed Container?

Get Started with a Free ActiveState Container


Best practices for Container Security

Choose or create an image which is hardened, minimized, and keep remediating vulnerabilities as they are identified.

  1. Minimized - only include the packages and other requirements that are absolutely needed for your image
  2. Hardened - the packages that are required are built securely and are configured to be secure
  3. Recent/latest - Use the most up to date version of your image to ensure that you are using all of the most recent security patches
  4. Remediate - Hopefully the steps above will prevent most vulnerabilities, but when a vulnerability is found in your image, you can patch it or find an alternate package

Why Use an ActiveState Managed Container?

Managing secure containers is complex, time-intensive, and expensive. Hardened base images offer only a starting point—they still require teams to manually layer application dependencies, monitor for vulnerabilities, and manage the build process. This process not only drains resources but also increases the risk of reintroducing vulnerabilities through unverified public packages such as typo-squatting, slop squatting, and unrelated vulnerabilities.

ActiveState solves this with fully managed containers that go far beyond secure base images. Powered by a catalog of over 40 million vetted open-source components, our containers are customized to your application’s needs and rebuilt nightly with signed SBOMs and automated CVE remediation (7-day SLA for critical issues).

Our automated build system handles the heavy lifting—ensuring every container is secure, consistent, and compliant without disrupting your workflow. And with secure, distroless images for popular languages like Python, Java, and Node.js available on Docker Hub, you can integrate immediately into your CI/CD pipeline.

With ActiveState, container security is no longer a burden—it’s built in.

Get Started with a Free ActiveState Container

ActiveState’s free, minimized, hardened, low-to-no CVE container images are rebuilt regularly and bring security to the forefront of your production workloads and CI/CD pipelines.

These containers are a quick way to run or try a secure container with ActiveState. This container is a base level container and only includes the required features for running a very simple program in the designated programming language. To get a container that meets your organization’s needs, check out our container request page here.

Run and Scan a Container

To run a sample container, follow the instructions found in the overview of each DockerHub Container Overview on ActiveState’s DockerHub page.