bifrost security vs Fairwinds Polaris

Bifrost Security provides runtime security for containerised workloads, using observed behaviour to assess CVEs and generate workload-specific protections. Its agent monitors system calls, file access, signals, capabilities, and network ports at kernel level without requiring code changes. For each CVE, Bifrost reports whether it is reachable, mitigated by a security profile, or never loaded, and provides evidence for the verdict. The agent collects behavioural metadata only; Bifrost says it does not collect application data or personal information. The product can ingest CycloneDX and SPDX SBOMs and rescan them for CVEs across environments. It also creates default-deny AppArmor profiles from observed workload behaviour. Deployment is as a DaemonSet via Helm, with stated resource use below 200 MB RAM per node and below 1% performance impact. Bifrost supports Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, and Nomad workloads. A 14-day trial includes the full Pro edition and requires no credit card. Pricing is on request. The company is based in Stockholm, Sweden.

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.