Until now, visibility into software and software development–related risks in the cloud has been fragmented and incomplete. AppSec teams have had to invest in multiple tools—each covering only part of the picture—then manually stitch together results. Even then, these efforts rarely uncovered the root cause of risks in code or resulted in clear guidance on how to remediate them.
OX Security changes this conundrum by connecting runtime risks directly back to application code. Instead of simply seeing what’s exposed in production, security teams gain clarity into why a risk exists, where it originated, and how to fix it at the source.
Public Images: A Persistent Blind Spot
For years, application security focused on proprietary code and private registries. But modern applications are assembled, not just written. Public container images—base images, dependencies, and tools from registries like Docker Hub or Quay—are now embedded in nearly every cloud-native workload.
These images accelerate development but create blind spots. External code runs inside your environment, often unverified and unmonitored. Without visibility into which images are in use or what vulnerabilities they contain, teams are effectively operating in the dark.
The Shared Problem Nobody Owns
Public container images sit in a gray zone. Developers rely on them for speed. Security teams lack the tooling or authority to track them effectively. As a result, a growing share of the attack surface remains unmanaged.
The risks are structural:
- Packages are outdated or misconfigured
- Secrets are embedded
- Images get published by unverified maintainers
- Silent images are being replaced or tampered with
- Malicious payloads are introduced via typosquatting or compromised accounts
Popularity is not proof of safety. Without verification, assumptions about trustworthiness leave critical gaps.
OX: Comprehensive Visibility, Simplified Remediation
OX Security’s Scanning Public Images capability closes this gap by linking public image risks directly back to the application code and workloads that use them. This approach transforms visibility into actionable intelligence.
Core Functions:
- Multi-source discovery: Extracts image names, tags, and hashes directly from Kubernetes clusters and registries—capturing what’s actually deployed.
- Dedicated scanning pipeline: Public images undergo vulnerability analysis enriched with metadata on provenance, integrity validation, usage, and trust level.
- Artifact integrity checks: Unknown or untraceable images are flagged immediately.
Unified issues: All vulnerabilities linked to a single image are consolidated into one actionable issue. The most effective remediation path—upgrading the image—is made clear.
From Noise to Actionable Insight
Traditional tools fragment findings across multiple reports, forcing teams to piece together context manually. OX consolidates everything related to a public image—vulnerabilities from code, container, and runtime scans—into a single issue. This reduces alert fatigue and accelerates Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR).
Beyond the vulnerabilities, OX enriches results with context:
- Provenance and trust: Official, verified, or community sources
- Integrity validation: Expected SHA vs. actual SHA to detect tampering
- Usage metrics: Pull counts and popularity data to inform prioritization
- Detailed image profile: Tags, versions, and release dates
This metadata allows teams to prioritize based not only on vulnerability counts but also on risk relevance and exposure.
Integrated Into the AppSec Workflow
Information without integration creates more work than it solves. That’s why OX ensures that public image insights appear where AppSec teams already manage their posture. Issues are clearly categorized under open source or container security, software bills of materials are updated with detailed image components, and artifacts are tracked in the same system as private assets.
This means that when a risk is discovered in a public image, it is not an out-of-band alert but a first-class element of the broader AppSec program. By tying runtime evidence back to the application code that introduced the image, OX closes the loop between detection and remediation, giving teams a practical way to move from visibility to action without leaving the platform.
Secure Your Software Supply Chain with Confidence
Modern applications rely heavily on public components, yet these very dependencies often create one of the least understood and least managed areas of cloud security. Unvetted images can introduce outdated packages, misconfigurations, or even malicious payloads, expanding the attack surface in ways most teams struggle to monitor.
OX provides the missing link. By connecting runtime findings back to code-level causes and presenting remediation in a clear, consolidated form, it helps organizations secure what was once a blind spot. Teams can see which images are in use, understand their trustworthiness, validate their integrity, and remediate issues with a single upgrade. OX Security’s “Scanning Public Images” feature empowers your organization to:
- Achieve better application security posture coverage by illuminating previously hidden risks.
- Accelerate remediation through intelligent issue consolidation and clear action paths.
- Make informed decisions with rich contextual data about image provenance and popularity.
- Streamline developer workflows by reducing alert fatigue and simplifying the path to resolution.
The result is not just fewer alerts, but meaningful clarity: visibility across both cloud and code, faster remediation cycles, and a software supply chain that can withstand the realities of modern software development.
