ARMO Platform vs Fairwinds Polaris

ARMO Platform is a Kubernetes-focused cloud security platform that uses runtime data to help secure cloud and container environments. It uses eBPF to record application behavior and build an Application Profile DNA baseline enriched with Kubernetes, CI/CD, cloud, and container context. Its coverage includes managed, on-premises, and air-gapped cloud and Kubernetes deployments. Kubernetes security features aim to reduce attack surfaces and continuously harden clusters, containers, hosts, and workloads. Agentless cloud posture management scans configurations and vulnerabilities, supports detection and response, and provides compliance remediation across AWS, GCP, Azure, and other environments. A runtime sensor creates workload SBOMs and identifies components in use; vulnerability prioritization draws on runtime context, EPSS, CISA-KEV, CVSS, exploitability, and fixability. Integrations include developer tools such as VSCode, Kubernetes Lens, GitHub, CircleCI, Jenkins, and Docker Desktop, plus SIEM options including Microsoft Sentinel, Splunk, Sumo Logic, and Webhook. Customers can use ARMO hosting, a private tenant in their cloud, or an on-premises installation. Pricing depends on vCPUs and other cloud resources, and a 21-day trial is listed.

Fairwinds Polaris is an open source policy engine for validating and remediating Kubernetes resource configuration. It includes more than 30 built-in policies, and teams can add their own using JSON Schema. Checks cover security practices such as least privilege, privilege escalation, root execution, and host IPC or PID settings, along with resource requests and limits, readiness and liveness probes, and image tags. Polaris can run as a dashboard, an admission controller, or a command-line tool for checking local YAML files in CI/CD. Its validating webhook rejects workloads that trigger danger-level checks; warning-level findings pass and appear in the dashboard or webhook logs. A mutating webhook or command-line run can automatically remediate supported issues, including missing limits and probes and some unsafe security settings. The dashboard can audit local files or connect to a live cluster, and can be installed with kubectl or Helm. The validating webhook requires a valid TLS certificate. Polaris is free and runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, web, and self-hosted environments.