Fairwinds Polaris vs KloudSec IaC Security

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.

KloudSec IaC Security scans Terraform and CloudFormation changes in pull requests to identify infrastructure misconfigurations before they merge. Its GitHub App runs scans automatically and reports findings as check runs and inline comments, without requiring CI pipeline changes. Teams can configure critical findings to stop a merge until they are resolved or explicitly acknowledged. The analysis considers relationships among resources, including network exposure, IAM permissions, encryption, and public access. Findings include AI-generated corrected Terraform blocks or CloudFormation snippets. The platform maps nine frameworks: CIS, PCI-DSS, SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, NIST, DORA, and FFIEC. AWS is available, while Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure are listed as coming soon. The Free plan allows five code scans per month and includes email support. A 14-day trial is offered without a credit card; paid plans start at $79 a month. KloudSec describes its intended users as startups, small and medium-sized businesses, and enterprises.