H-HMPP: A Heterogeneity-Based Microservice Deployment Method for Security Enhancement

While microservices architectures have significantly enhanced software modularity and scalability, they introduce unique security challenges that traditional monolithic approaches do not face. The proliferation of microservices often leads to homogeneity within systems, where multiple instances share iden-tical container images and software versions, creating a systemic security vulnerability that attackers can exploit. In homogeneous microservice environments, a single vulnerability can be exploited to compromise multiple services simultaneously, facilitating rapid lateral movement attacks and significantly reducing system re-silience against cyber threats. While existing security research has focused primarily on preventive measures like authentication protocols, the potential of strategic deployment patterns as a reactive defense mechanism remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we base our analysis on information theory to demonstrate that microservice deployment schemes affect system heterogeneity, which in turn influences overall security. Additionally, we proposed the Heterogeneous Microservices Placement Problem HMPP and developed a heuristic-based deployment algorithm, H- HMPP, to effectively address it. Extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate that our approach yields high-quality solutions while significantly reducing execution times.