| CPC G06F 21/577 (2013.01) [G06F 21/54 (2013.01); G06F 21/554 (2013.01); G06F 21/568 (2013.01)] | 20 Claims |

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1. A method executed by processor circuitry for performing hierarchical and incremental scanning to identify security issues in a workload executed using a set of electronic resources, the method comprising:
identifying with the processor circuitry at least one instance of the workload;
for each of the identified at least one instance, using the processor circuitry to perform hierarchical and incremental scanning by:
identifying as parent machine images one or more machine images that the instance originated from, wherein:
the parent machine images and the instance have a hierarchical tree structure as a set of related and connected nodes;
each of the nodes in the hierarchical tree structure represents one of the parent machine images or the instance;
a volume of the instance includes the entire content of each identified parent
machine image, wherein a volume of each identified parent machine image includes at least a portion of the volume of the instance; and
each of the nodes in the hierarchical tree structure is at least one of:
connected to one or more child nodes of the nodes in the hierarchical tree structure as a parent node, such that the one or more child nodes originated from the parent node; or
connected to a parent node of the nodes in the hierarchical tree structure as a child node, such that the child node originated from the parent node;
determining from the parent machine images a base machine image by identifying from amongst the parent machine images a parent machine image that:
has previously been scanned to identify security vulnerabilities; and
is most closely related to the instance according to the hierarchical tree structure;
identifying differences between a-the volume of the instance and the content of the base machine image;
scanning the identified differences for security vulnerabilities; and
when security vulnerabilities are identified in the differences, issuing a notification based on the identified security vulnerabilities.
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