But, we pay for support already.
Nice from docker!
Chainguard came to this first (arguably by accident since they had several other offerings before they realized that people would pay (?!!) for a image that reported zero CVEs).
In a previous role, I found that the value for this for startups is immense. Large enterprise deals can quickly be killed by a security team that that replies with "scanner says no". Chainguard offered images that report 0 CVEs and would basically remove this barrier.
For example, a common CVE that I encountered was a glibc High CVE. We could pretty convincingly show that our app did not use this library in way to be vulnerable but it didn't matter. A high CVE is a full stop for most security teams. Migrated to a Wolfi image and the scanner reported 0. Cool.
But with other orgs like Minimus (founders of Twistlock) coming into this it looks like its about to be crowded.
There is even a govt project called Ironbank to offer something like this to the DoD.
Net positive for the ecosystem but I don't know if there is enough meat on the bone to support this many vendors.
There's a "Make a request" button, but it links to this 404-ing GitHub URL: https://github.com/docker-hardened-images/discussion/issues
oh well. hope its good stuff otherwise.
With Bitnami discontinuing their offer, we recently switched to other providers. For some we are using a helm chart and this new offer provides some helm charts but for some software just the image. I would be interested to give this a try but e.g. the python image only various '(dev)' images while the guide mentions the non-dev images. So this requires some planning.
EDIT: Digging deeper, I notice it requires a PAT and a PAT is bound to a personal account. I guess you need the enterprise offering for organisation support. I am not going to waste my time to contact them for an enterprise offer for a small start-up. What is the use case for CVE hardened images that you cannot properly run in an CICD and only on your dev machine? Are there companies that need to follow compliance rules or need this security guarantee but don't have CICD in place?
Offering image hardening to custom images looks like a reasonable way for Docker to have a source of sustained income. Regulated industries like banks, insurers, or governmental agencies are likely interested.
The enterprise hardened images license seems to be a different offering for offline mirroring or more strict compliance…
The main reason for CVE hardened images is that it’s hard to trust individuals to do it right at scale, even with CI/CD. You’re having to wire together your own scan & update process. In practice teams will use pinned versions, delays in fixing, turn off scanning, etc. This is easy mode
The question I'd be interested in is, outside of markets where there's a lot of compliance requirements, how much demand is there for this as a paid service...
People like lower CVE images, but are they willing to pay for them. I guess that's an advantage for Docker's offering. If it's free there is less friction to trying it out compared to a commercial offering.
There's an excellent reason: They're login gated, which is at best unnecessary friction. Took me straight from "oh, let me try it" to "nope, not gonna bother".
Chainguard still has better CVE response time and can better guarantee you zero active exploits found by your prod scanners.
(No affiliation with either, but we use chainguard at work, and used to use bitnami too before I ripped it all out)
Bait and switch once the adoption happens has become way too common in the industry.
Do with that knowledge what you may.
It's what the people who created OG Docker are building now
I work at Chainguard. We don't guarantee zero active exploits, but we do have a contractual SLA we offer around CVE scan results (those aren't quite the same thing unfortunately).
We do issue an advisory feed in a few versions that scanners integrate with. The traditional format we used (which is what most scanners supported at the time) didn't have a way to include pending information so we couldn't include it there.
The basic flow was: scanner finds CVE and alerts, we issue statement showing when and where we fixed it, the scanner understands that and doesn't show it in versions after that.
so there wasn't really a spot to put "this is present", that was the scanner's job. Not all scanners work that way though, and some just rely on our feed and don't do their own homework so it's hit or miss.
We do have another feed now that uses the newer OSV format, in that feed we have all the info around when we detect it, when we patch it, etc.
All this info is available publicly and shown in our console, many of them you can see here: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisories
You can take this example: https://github.com/wolfi-dev/advisories/blob/main/amass.advi... and see the timestamps for when we detected CVEs, in what version, and how long it took us to patch.
Not a problem for casual users but even a small team like mine, a dozen people with around a dozen public images, can hit the pull limit deploying a dozen landscapes a day. We just cache all the public images ourselves and avoid it.
https://www.docker.com/blog/revisiting-docker-hub-policies-p...
> Is Docker sunsetting the Free Team plan?
> No. Docker communicated its intent to sunset the Docker Free Team plan on March 14, 2023, but this decision was reversed on March 24, 2023.
Containers are the universal path to production for most developers, and Docker has always been the steward of the ecosystem. Docker Hub has over 20 billion monthly pulls, with nearly 90% of organizations now relying on containers in their software delivery workflows. That gives us a responsibility: to help secure the software supply chain for the world.
Why? Supply-chain attacks are exploding. In 2025, they caused more than $60 billion in damage, tripling from 2021. No one is safe. Every language, every ecosystem, every build and distribution step is a target.
For this reason, we launched Docker Hardened Images (DHI), a secure, minimal, production-ready set of images, in May 2025, and since then have hardened over 1,000 images and helm charts in our catalog. Today, we are establishing a new industry standard by making DHI freely available and open source to everyone who builds software. All 26 Million+ developers in the container ecosystem. DHI is fully open and free to use, share, and build on with no licensing surprises, backed by an Apache 2.0 license. DHI now gives the world a secure, minimal, production-ready foundation from the very first pull.
If it sounds too good to be true, here’s the bottom line up front: every developer and every application can (and should!) use DHI without restrictions. When you need continuous security patching, applied in under 7 days, images for regulated industries (e.g., FIPS, FedRAMP), you want to build customized images on our secure build infrastructure, or you need security patches beyond end-of-life, DHI has commercial offerings. Simple.
Since the introduction of DHI, enterprises like Adobe and Qualcomm have bet on Docker for securing their entire enterprise to achieve the most stringent levels of compliance, while startups like Attentive and Octopus Deploy have accelerated their ability to get compliance and sell to larger businesses.
Now everyone and every application can build securely from the first docker build. Unlike other opaque or proprietary hardened images, DHI is compatible with Alpine and Debian, trusted and familiar open source foundations teams already know and can adopt with minimal change. And while some vendors suppress CVEs in their feed to maintain a green scanner, Docker is always transparent, even when we’re still working on patches, because we fundamentally believe you should always know what your security posture is. The result: dramatically reduced CVEs (guaranteed near zero in DHI Enterprise), images up to 95 percent smaller, and secure defaults without ever compromising transparency or trust.
There’s more. We’ve already built Hardened Helm Charts to leverage DHI images in Kubernetes environments; those are open source too. And today, we’re expanding that foundation with Hardened MCP Servers. We’re bringing DHI’s security principles to the MCP interface layer, the backbone of every agentic app. And starting now, you can run hardened versions of the MCP servers developers rely on most: Mongo, Grafana, GitHub, and more. And this is just the beginning. In the coming months, we will extend this hardened foundation across the entire software stack with hardened libraries, hardened system packages, and other secure components everyone depends on. The goal is simple: be able to secure your application from main() down.
Base images define your application’s security from the very first layer, so it’s critical to know exactly what goes into them. Here’s how we approach it.
First: total transparency in every part of our minimal, opinionated, secure images.
DHI uses a distroless runtime to shrink the attack surface while keeping the tools developers rely on. But security is more than minimalism; it requires full transparency. Too many vendors blur the truth with proprietary CVE scoring, downgraded vulnerabilities, or vague promises about reaching SLSA Build Level 3.
DHI takes a different path. Every image includes a complete and verifiable SBOM. Every build provides SLSA Build Level 3 provenance. Every vulnerability is assessed using transparent public CVE data; we won’t hide vulnerabilities when we haven’t fixed them. Every image comes with proof of authenticity. The result: a secure foundation you can trust, built with clarity, verified with evidence, and delivered without compromise.
Second: Migrating to secure images takes real work, and no one should pretend otherwise. But as you’d expect from Docker, we’ve focused on making the DX incredibly easy to use. As we mentioned before, DHI is built on the open source foundations the world already trusts, Debian and Alpine, so teams can adopt it with minimal friction. We’re reducing that friction even more: Docker’s AI assistant can scan your existing containers and recommend or even apply equivalent hardened images; the feature is experimental as this is day one, but we’ll quickly GA it as we learn from real world migrations.
Lastly: we think about the most aggressive SLAs and longest support times and make certain that every piece of DHI can support that when you need it.
DHI Enterprise, the commercial offering of DHI, includes a 7-day commitment for critical CVE remediation, with a roadmap toward one day or less. For regulated industries and mission-critical systems, this level of trust is mandatory. Achieving it is hard. It demands deep test automation and the ability to maintain patches that diverge from upstream until they are accepted. That is why most organizations cannot do this on their own. In addition, DHI Enterprise allows organizations to easily customize DHI images, leveraging Docker’s build infrastructure which takes care of the full image lifecycle management for you, ensuring that build provenance and compliance is maintained. For example, typically organizations need to add certificates and keys, system packages, scripts, and so on. DHI’s build service makes this trivial.
Because our patching SLAs and our build service carry real operational cost, DHI has historically been one commercial offering. But our vision has always been broader. This level of security should be available to everyone, and the timing matters. Now that the evidence, infrastructure, and industry partnerships are in place, we are delivering on that vision. That is why today we are making Docker Hardened Images free and open source.
This move carries the same spirit that defined Docker Official Images over a decade ago. We made them free, kept them free, and backed them with clear docs, best practices, and consistent maintenance. That foundation became the starting point for millions of developers and partners.
Now we’re doing it again. DHI being free is powered by a rapidly growing ecosystem of partners, from Google, MongoDB, and the CNCF delivering hardened images to security platforms like Snyk and JFrog Xray integrating DHI directly into their scanners. Together, we are building a unified, end-to-end supply chain that raises the security bar for the entire industry.
Jonathan Bryce
Executive Director at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation
James Governor
Analyst and Co-founder, RedMonk
Ryan J. Salva
Senior Director of Product at Google, Developer Experiences
Jim Scharf
Chief Technology Officer, MongoDB
David DeSanto
Chief Executive Officer, Anaconda
Feross Aboukhadijeh
Founder and CEO, Socket
Maxim Fateev
Chief Technology Officer, Temporal
Rob Zuber
Chief Technology Officer, CircleCI
Vikram Sethi
Principal Scientist, Adobe
Waldemar Hummer
Co-Founder and CTO at LocalStack
Everyone now has a secure foundation to start from with DHI. But businesses of all shapes and sizes often need more. Compliance requirements and risk tolerance may demand CVE patches ahead of upstream the moment the source becomes available. Companies operating in enterprise or government sectors must meet strict standards such as FIPS or STIG. And because production can never stop, many organizations need security patching to continue even after upstream support ends.
That is why we now offer three DHI options, each built for a different security reality.
Docker Hardened Images: Free for Everyone. DHI is the foundation modern software deserves: minimal hardened images, easy migration, full transparency, and an open ecosystem built on Alpine and Debian.
Docker Hardened Images (DHI) Enterprise: DHI Enterprise delivers the guarantees that organizations, governments, and institutions with strict security or regulatory demands rely on. FIPS-enabled and STIG-ready images. Compliance with CIS benchmarks. SLA-backed remediations they can trust for critical CVEs in under 7 days. And those SLAs keep getting shorter as we push toward one-day (or less) critical fixes.
For teams that need more control, DHI Enterprise delivers. Change your images. Configure runtimes. Install tools like curl. Add certificates. DHI Enterprise gives you unlimited customization, full catalog access, and the ability to shape your images on your terms while staying secure.
DHI Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS): ELS is a paid add-on to DHI Enterprise, built to solve one of software’s hardest problems. When upstream support ends, patches stop but vulnerabilities don’t. Scanners light up, auditors demand answers, and compliance frameworks expect verified fixes. ELS ends that cycle with up to five additional years of security coverage, continuous CVE patches, updated SBOMs and provenance, and ongoing signing and auditability for compliance.
You can learn more about these options here.
Securing the container ecosystem is something we do together. Today, we’re giving the world a stronger foundation to build on. Now we want every developer, every open source project, every software vendor, and every platform to make Docker Hardened Images the default.
Lastly, we are just getting started, and if you’re reading this and want to help build the future of container security, we’d love to meet you. Join us.
Today’s announcement marks a watershed moment for our industry. Docker is fundamentally changing how applications are built-secure by default for every developer, every organization, and every open-source project.
This moment fills me with pride as it represents the culmination of years of work: from the early days at Atomist building an event-driven SBOM and vulnerability management system, the foundation that still underpins Docker Scout today, to unveiling DHI earlier this year, and now making it freely available to all. I am deeply grateful to my incredible colleagues and friends at Docker who made this vision a reality, and to our partners and customers who believed in us from day one and shaped this journey with their guidance and feedback.
Yet while this is an important milestone, it remains just that, a milestone. We are far from done, with many more innovations on the horizon. In fact, we are already working on what comes next.
Security is a team sport, and today Docker opened the field to everyone. Let’s play.
I joined Docker to positively impact as many developers as possible. This launch gives every developer the right to secure their applications without adding toil to their workload. It represents a monumental shift in the container ecosystem and the digital experiences we use every day.
I’m extremely proud of the product we’ve built and the customers we serve every day. I’ve had the time of my life building this with our stellar team and I’m more excited than ever for what’s to come next.