5 Platforms That Actively Remove CVEs from Your Container Images

Modern teams rely on containers to ship features quickly, keep environments consistent, and scale without drama. The tradeoff is that every image you push can carry hidden risk in the form of outdated libraries, misconfigured packages, or unpatched operating system components.

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) turn that technical debt into real security exposure. A single unpatched library can open a path for remote code execution or data theft across many services at once.

I have found that scanning images for CVEs is only the first step. If you want real protection, you need tools that help you continuously remove, rebuild, and harden images, not just generate long reports.

What You Will Learn

Understand why container image CVEs are such a persistent risk
See five platforms that actively help reduce or remove CVEs from images
Learn what features to prioritize when evaluating these tools
Discover how to bake CVE elimination into your DevSecOps workflows
Get practical ideas you can apply to existing Kubernetes and CI/CD setups

The Real Impact of Vulnerable Container Images

Containers give you speed and portability, but they are always built on someone else’s components. Base images and third party packages are updated on their own schedule, which means new CVEs can silently appear in images that looked fine a week ago.

When a widely used library receives a new CVE, all of the images that rely on it become potential attack surfaces. It only takes one forgotten image or long lived environment to turn that theoretical weakness into an incident.

From a business perspective, unresolved CVEs in container images can create several problems:

Compromised infrastructure – Attackers can chain vulnerabilities to move from a single container into the host or the orchestrator.
Data loss and compliance issues – CVE driven breaches can trigger investigations under SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, or NIST based programs.
Unexpected downtime – Incident response, forensics, and emergency patching can take services offline at the worst possible moment.
Rising remediation cost – Fixing images after production deployment usually means more coordination, more testing, and more delays.

In my experience, teams that treat CVE management as a continuous process, rather than a one time scan, are the ones that stay ahead of these risks.

Top 5 Platforms

There is no shortage of vulnerability scanners on the market. The platforms below stand out because they help you go a step further and actually reduce or remove CVEs from images before they reach production.

1. Echo

Echo takes a proactive approach to container security. Instead of endlessly patching legacy images, it builds vulnerability-free images from scratch, with only the necessary components, and keeps them secure as new vulnerabilities appear.

The idea is simple: if the base images you rely on are continuously rebuilt and stripped of known CVEs, every new deployment starts from a safer foundation.

Key capabilities

CVE free base images – Echo rebuilds and hardens images so that known vulnerabilities are removed at the source.
Automated rebuilds – When a new CVE is disclosed, Echo can trigger a new, secure build without manual effort from your team.
Broad language coverage – Supports common ecosystems such as Java, Python, Node.js, Go, and .NET.
Smooth CI and registry integration – Built for compatibility with Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL, etc., echo fits right into existing pipelines so teams can adopt it without re-architecting everything.
Compliance requirements – FIPS and STIG images fast-track compliance standards like FedRAMP.

Echo is a strong fit if you want to move away from endless patch cycles and toward a model where images are constantly refreshed from a trusted, clean base.

2. Aqua Security

Aqua Security focuses on securing containers across the entire lifecycle, from build through runtime. Its agents and scanners help you discover CVEs in images, enforce policies, and watch for dangerous behavior in running workloads.

Rather than treating vulnerability reports as the final output, Aqua uses them as inputs for blocking risky images and tightening runtime controls.

Key capabilities

Deep CVE visibility – Scans image layers, packages, and registries to highlight vulnerabilities before deployment.
Policy-driven gates – Lets you create rules that prevent non-compliant images from running in production clusters.
Runtime protection – Monitors container behavior and flags actions such as privilege escalation or unusual process activity.
Compliance reporting – Generates evidence that maps to frameworks like SOC 2, PCI DSS, and NIST based controls.
Native integration with container platforms – Works with Kubernetes, Docker, and common CI tools so security checks stay close to your delivery flow.

I recommend Aqua if you want one platform that can both surface CVEs and enforce decisions about whether vulnerable images are allowed to run.

3. Ubuntu Container Images

Canonical’s Ubuntu container images provide a stable, well-maintained base for many applications. The real security value comes from the long-term support model and the predictable cadence of security updates.

If your workloads rely heavily on Ubuntu, starting with Canonical-maintained images can remove much of the guesswork around CVE patching at the operating system level.

Key capabilities

Long-term security maintenance – Ubuntu LTS releases receive updates for years, and Ubuntu Pro extends that even further.
Regular image rebuilds – Base images are refreshed to incorporate new security fixes before many teams would notice the issues on their own.
Hybrid environment coverage – Works consistently across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid deployments.
Support for standard registries and platforms – Plays nicely with Docker, Kubernetes, and OCI-compliant registries.
Alignment with security benchmarks – Helps organizations stay closer to CIS and NIST guidelines for hardened images.

Ubuntu containers are a solid option when you want vendor-backed security patches for the underlying operating system, so you can focus on the application layer.

4. Red Hat Universal Base Image

Red Hat Universal Base Image (UBI) gives you a redistributable, enterprise-backed foundation for building images that integrate well with Red Hat ecosystems, including OpenShift.

UBI images are continuously maintained by Red Hat security teams, which helps reduce the number of CVEs you have to handle yourself.

Key capabilities

Ongoing security updates – Red Hat tracks and patches vulnerabilities across UBI images.
Compliance-aware design – Built with requirements such as FedRAMP, PCI DSS, and NIST 800 series controls in mind.
Predictable lifecycle – Clear versioning and support timelines make it easier to plan upgrades and deprecations.
Hybrid and multi-cloud focus – Designed for OpenShift and other Red Hat platforms, but still flexible enough for broader environments.
Redistributable licensing – You can share and reuse UBI based images while still benefiting from Red Hat’s update pipeline.

If your organization already uses Red Hat technologies, UBI is a natural way to minimize OS level CVEs and keep security posture consistent.

5. Google Distroless Images

Google Distroless images take a minimalist approach. They include only the application and a narrow set of required libraries, leaving out shells, package managers, and other tools that attackers often abuse.

By shipping fewer components, you reduce both the number of potential CVEs and the size of the attack surface.

Key capabilities

Minimal footprint – Removes non-essential utilities so there are fewer binaries and libraries that can contain vulnerabilities.
Smaller image sizes – Lean images move faster through registries and pipelines, which improves build and deployment times.
Secure build process – Built and signed within Google’s hardened infrastructure.
Production-focused design – Intended for immutable workloads running in Kubernetes, serverless platforms, and modern CI/CD pipelines.
Strong community adoption – Widely used by teams that want to reduce runtime drift and cut down on avoidable CVEs.

Distroless images work best when your application is already well understood and you are comfortable operating with the minimal tools baked into the image.

How To Evaluate Platforms That Remove CVEs

On paper, many tools promise to improve container security. In practice, a few capabilities make a real difference when you are trying to eliminate or sharply reduce CVEs in images.

Here are the factors I pay the most attention to:

Automated image rebuilding
Look for platforms that automatically rebuild or regenerate images when new vulnerabilities are discovered. Manual patching does not scale in fast-moving environments.
Integration depth
Strong integrations with registries, CI servers, and your orchestration platform mean less friction for developers and more reliable enforcement for security teams.
Signal quality
A good platform prioritizes findings and reduces noise so that engineers act on high-risk issues first instead of wading through endless low-impact CVEs.
Scalability and coverage
The tool should handle multiple clusters, regions, and teams without forcing you to manage each image in isolation.
Compliance-friendly reporting
Built-in reports that map to frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, or NIST make life easier when auditors ask how you manage vulnerabilities in containers.

If a platform scores well across these dimensions, it is far more likely to help you actually remove CVEs rather than simply document them.

Bringing CVE Elimination Into DevSecOps

Eliminating CVEs from container images works best when it becomes part of your existing DevSecOps process, not a separate add-on that people can bypass.

Here are some practical ways to weave these platforms into day-to-day work:

Shift security checks earlier – Run image scans and policy checks in pull request pipelines so issues are caught before they reach shared registries.
Standardize base images – Agree on a small set of trusted, vendor-maintained bases such as Ubuntu containers, UBI, or Distroless, then retire ad hoc images.
Automate rebuilds – Use tools like Echo or your chosen platform to trigger secure rebuilds whenever upstream components receive critical fixes.
Create clear policies – Define which severities or CVE scores will block deployments and which will generate warnings, then socialize those rules with engineering teams.
Share visibility – Give both developers and security staff access to dashboards so everyone can see which services are drifting out of compliance.

When you embed these practices into your pipelines, reducing CVEs stops feeling like a special security project and starts to look like normal engineering hygiene.

Wrap Up

Containers will remain central to how we build and deliver software, but that does not mean you have to accept a constant stream of CVEs in your images. By combining trusted base images, rebuilding focused platforms, and strong runtime controls, you can significantly lower your exposure.

In my experience, the most successful teams pick one or two platforms that fit their stack, standardize around them, and then keep refining policies over time. If you start by tightening up your base images and automating rebuilds when new vulnerabilities appear, you will already be ahead of many organizations that still treat container CVEs as an afterthought.