ARMO Platform vs Open Policy Agent Gatekeeper

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.

Open Policy Agent Gatekeeper is a free, open-source Kubernetes policy controller for Linux and self-hosted deployments. It runs as a validating and mutating webhook, enforcing CRD-based policies evaluated by Open Policy Agent. Validation constraints can deny requests, warn, run in dry-run mode or report violations without changing resources. Mutation policies can alter matching resources during admission before validation checks the final object. An audit function periodically evaluates existing cluster resources against constraints to identify pre-existing misconfigurations. The project includes an extensible policy library with parameterized examples, and provider connections to external data such as image registries and directory services. Named integrations or backed services include Azure Policy for Kubernetes, Google Kubernetes Engine Policy Controller, Rancher, AWS EKS Blueprints and Alibaba Cloud. Installation options include prebuilt, development or locally built images and Helm. Gatekeeper requires Kubernetes resources introduced in version 1.16 and cluster-admin permissions for installation. The gator CLI is documented as beta from version 3.11.