What is AWS ECR Image Scanning and where does it fit in a DevSecOps pipeline?

Describe AWS ECR Image Scanning by the failure it prevents, not by its feature list. It belongs to container registry scanning and runs at the image stage of delivery, which matters because the cost of fixing a defect rises sharply the later it is found — the core argument behind shifting security left.

Strong answers cover basic scanning (Clair-based, on push) vs enhanced scanning (Inspector-backed, continuous), scan-on-push configuration, filtering findings by severity, lifecycle policies to expire vulnerable tags, and gating a deploy on scan results. Interviewers also listen for the operational side: who owns the rules, how findings reach the developer who introduced them, how false positives get suppressed without silently disabling coverage, and what the break-glass path is when a fix genuinely cannot ship in time.

Tie it to the wider toolchain. Security scanning is only useful when its output is actionable, deduplicated across tools, and attached to a specific commit, image digest or resource — otherwise teams learn to ignore it.