PSS · Product Safety and Security
PSS-11 Images for Virtual Machines and Containers
Changed since C5:2020
Basic criterion
Extended aspects to be covered by the equipped functionalities by images being labelled with information about their origin.
Bullet points are now sorted to ease discussions about specific list items.
Wording in C5:2020
Basic criterion
If cloud customers operate virtual machines or containers with the cloud service, the Cloud Service Provider must ensure the following aspects:
- The cloud customer can restrict the selection of images of virtual machines or containers according to his specifications, so that users of this cloud customer can only launch the images or containers released according to these restrictions.
- If the Cloud Service Provider provides images of virtual machines or containers to the Cloud Customer, the Cloud Service Provider appropriately inform the Cloud Customer of the changes made to the previous version.
- In addition, these images provided by the Cloud Service Provider are hardened according to generally accepted industry standards.
Additional criterion
At startup and runtime of virtual machine or container images, an integrity check is performed that detects image manipulations and reports them to the cloud customer.
Basic criterion
If cloud service customers operate virtual machines or containers with the cloud service, the cloud service provided is equipped with functionalities that ensure the following aspects:
- Cloud service customers can restrict the selection of images of virtual machines or containers according to their specifications, so that users of the cloud service customer can only launch the images or containers released according to these restrictions;
- If the cloud service provider provides images of virtual machines or containers to the cloud service customer, the cloud service provider appropriately informs the cloud service customer of the changes made to the previous version;
- Images provided by the cloud service provider are labelled with information regarding their origin; and
- Images provided by the cloud service provider are hardened according to generally accepted industry standards.
Supplementary information
This criterion is typically not applicable to the SaaS service model.
Generally accepted industry standards are, for example, the Security Configuration Benchmark of the Centre for Internet Security (CIS) or the corresponding modules in the BSI IT-Grundschutz-Compendium.
Additional criterion
PSS-11.01AC
Additional, complementingThe cloud service provider checks the integrity and authenticity of virtual machines or container images at startup and informs the cloud service customer accordingly about the results of those checks.
Supplementary information
Typical measures for checking virtual machines or container images against integrity and authenticity include cryptographical signing.
PSS-11.02AC
Additional, complementingDuring runtime, the cloud service provider protects the virtual machines or container images against tampering and informs the cloud service customer accordingly about the status during runtime.
Complementary customer criteria
What cloud service customers implement on their side.
Cloud service customers ensure with suitable controls that the images of virtual machines or containers they operate with the cloud service comply with their information security management requirements and that the results of the integrity checks at startup and at runtime are processed according to these requirements.
Related criteria
BSI text from C5:2026 and its changelog: © Federal Office for Information Security 2026, reproduced unchanged under CC BY-ND 4.0. Unofficial site, not affiliated with BSI. Licence and sources