Policy

Once an image has been analyzed and its content has been discovered, categorized, and processed, the results can be evaluated against a user-defined set of checks to give a final pass/fail recommendation for an image. Anchore Engine policies are how users describe which checks to perform on what images and how the results should be interpreted.

A policy is expressed as a policy bundle, which is made up from a set of rules that are used to perform an evaluation of a container image. The rules can define checks against an image for things such as:

security vulnerabilities
package whitelists and blacklists
configuration file contents
presence of credentials in image
image manifest changes
exposed ports

These checks are defined as Gates that contain Triggers that perform specific checks and emit matching results and these define the things that the engine can automatically evaluate and return a decision about.

For a full listing of gates, triggers, and their parameters see: Anchore Policy Checks

These policies can be applied globally or customized for specific images or categories of applications.

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