We often hear about supply chains and how critical such systems are for a well-functioning economy and society. Containers are your software supply chain. Workloads span data centers, clouds, and distributed edges, blurring the definition of what the edge really is, making it more ubiquitous than we think, which results in enterprises no longer operating within neat boundaries. In hybrid and edge architectures, the wrong base image multiplies risk, licensing friction, patch drift, and support gaps right at the exact moment when reliability and security matter most. That’s why at GuardDog AI, we built and certified our Complete Sensor on the Red Hat Universal Base Image, and not by chance, as UBI is the foundation that couples developer freedom with enterprise-grade security, lifecycle, and support.
We’re after zero friction, zero guesswork, security, enterprise trust, scalability, reliability, toil-reduction, and lifecycle assurance that enterprises demand. This complexity is exhilarating, and with UBI, we deliver not only all of the above but also the portability and assurance enterprises demand. This decision wasn’t accidental. It was very much intentional. Let’s unpack why.
Introduction
We have been hard at work and have gone through a very interesting journey taking us from having our own hardware unit where our solution was uniquely and exclusively deployed on, to supporting virtual machines, to having our own OCI compliant container, and now based on Red Hat UBI which sums up all the work we have done so far, and puts us at the top layers of the pyramid on how we engineered our product building upon existing layers.
What it is and Why
With this certification, GuardDog AI can build and distribute Red Hat–based containers freely, with the option to unlock full Red Hat support when deployed on licensed Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat OpenShift.
GuardDog AI’s certification of its Complete Sensor with Red Hat UBI helps ensure that enterprises can deploy cybersecurity seamlessly across containerized ecosystems without retooling and with the bonus of reducing toil, which one would definitely have to account for when implementing other solutions.
Red Hat UBI is a freely redistributable container-based image built from Red Hat sources. Teams can develop and share freely; when those containers run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat OpenShift, they’re covered by Red Hat’s production support, sharing the same CVE streams, errata, and tooling operations teams already trust.
● Signals of momentum. Docker Hub usage of UBI has grown significantly. UBI images are being pulled millions of times monthly, with a 2.6x increase over the span of a year. On community forums, users note that UBI makes a “good base image in pipelines,” even if not always visible on public registries.
● Enterprise content parity. UBI inherits the hardening, performance characteristics, and component reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so no more “community vs. prod” split-brain.
● Security lifecycle. Containers tap into Red Hat’s CVE patching and errata pipeline, so remediation flows the same way it does for the OS.
● Redistribution freedom brings support on demand. Build and share without subscription gates; get full Red Hat support when running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift.
For us, this means
• Seamless, certified Integration.
• GuardDog’s sensor uses Red Hat UBI as the base image, enabling placement in the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog and compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenShift, and Red Hat-supported runtimes.
• Security & Patch Consistency. By aligning to Red Hat UBI, the sensor inherits tighter patch cycles and reduces vulnerability management toil for platform and security l teams.
• Simplified Adoption & Portability
• Production-Grade Support. Running on Red Hat platforms unlocks full production support routes, tickets, tooling, Insights integration, and policy-aligned images (SELinux-enforced)—a critical ingredient for regulated industries and compliance programs.
For the stakeholders
• Build once, deploy consistently across Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenShift, multi-cloud, and edge. • Language-specific UBI runtime images accelerate app delivery.
For Enterprises
• Consistency across on-prem, cloud, and edge with a single, trusted base.
• Lifecycle assurance with predictable patches, clear SBOM lineage, and supportability.
• Seamless updates through Red Hat’s errata and Insights, minimizing drift.
• Compliance alignment: hardened, SELinux-enforced images that support frameworks (e.g., FedRAMP-aligned environments) without DIY hardening.
• Certification translates into trust and supported containers that reduce risk.
For Partners & Resellers
• Access to Red Hat’s ecosystem and catalog.
• Joint service opportunities built on trust.
• Offer a catalog-listed, Red Hat-certified GuardDog container as part of managed or integrated solutions.
• Create service revenue around hybrid/edge security backed by Red Hat certification.
• Easier integration into stack offerings.
• Align with GuardDog’s Partner Certification Program for go-to-market
enablement.
• Opens new revenue streams.
Support is the Missing Piece in Container Security
Tooling catches threats; support keeps the business running. With UBI on Red Hat platforms:
• Your containers inherit production-grade support not community best-effort.
• Red Hat Insights helps surface misconfigurations and vulnerabilities early, enabling proactive remediation.
• Policy alignment is simpler: hardened images, SELinux, and consistent build provenance make audits faster and drift rarer.
This shared support model means you aren’t stitching together unsupported images across clusters. You’re running a certified, enterprise-backed stack from base image to platform.
Patterns That Win: GuardDog + Red Hat Across all infrastructures
This all-encompassing strategy we put together allows for multiple offerings that cater to not only existing Red Hat customers, but also non-customers that may be looking for a mature solution to do away with all the overhead needed to implement the foundation of a well-built secure stack.
• GuardDog support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux at the edge: Lightweight security at the far edge where bandwidth and hands-on ops are limited.
• GuardDog support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Deployable security container on the full version of the well-known operating system.
• GuardDog support for Red Hat OpenShift multi-cloud deployments: Uniform guardrails across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and on-prem clusters.
• IoT + Agentless Security: Protect unmanaged and semi-managed devices often out of reach of traditional endpoint agents.
With all this, we target rapid attack containment with minimal operational toil, and industry-leading vulnerability assessment, which is purpose-built for distributed and containerized estates.
Build on Trust, Move at the Speed of Business
Red Hat and GuardDog AI are both well-recognized brands you can trust. This choice is more than a certification badge. It is a commitment to and saying yes to trust, scale, empowerment, security, and a production-ready solution that offers consistency across every environment out there while reducing toil, keeping it agentless, and providing an autonomous real-time defense designed for modern distributed infrastructures.
As enterprises push deeper into AI-driven automation, distributed edge, and multi-cloud orchestration, the choice of container foundation becomes strategic, not tactical.
We have now gone over a myriad of reasons why it made sense for GuardDog AI to make the move to Red Hat UBI, and why any other ISV should not think twice about building their applications on top of UBI as the base image. If this does not make the case for business, engineering, sales, partners, customers, vendors, and providers, then I don’t know what will.
In collaboration with Red Hat, GuardDog AI delivers the enterprise-grade cybersecurity backbone needed to secure workloads from the data center to the far edge, without slowing business innovation. Let’s build the future together.
Learn More: https://guarddog.ai/redhat/
i Red Hat. (2024, March 19). Introducing Red Hat Universal Base Image. Red Hat. https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/introducing-red-hat-universal-base-image
ii Red Hat. (n.d.). Building, running, and managing containers: Characteristics of UBI images (Assembly types of container images). In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 documentation. Red Hat https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/htmlsingle/building_running_and_managing_containers/index#con_characteristics-of-UBI images_assembly_types-of-container-images
iii Red Hat. (2019, April 22). End User License Agreement: Red Hat Universal Base Image [PDF]. https://www.redhat.com/licenses/EULA_Red_Hat_Universal_Base_Image_English_20190422.pdf
iv Docker. (2023, May 25). Red Hat UBI Pulls on Docker Hub Grow 160% Year-Over-Year. Docker Blog. https://www.docker.com/blog/blog-red-hat-universal-base-image-hub-pulls-grow
v Reddit. (2022, August 29). Current thoughts on UBI? [Discussion post]. Reddit.