How to Secure Your Self-Hosted AI Infrastructure
Essential security practices for self-hosted AI stacks: network isolation, authentication, secrets management, container hardening, and vulnerability scanning.
Self-hosting AI infrastructure gives you control, but it also gives you responsibility for security. An exposed Ollama API or an unprotected n8n dashboard can be exploited within hours of deployment. Here's how to lock down your stack properly.
Network Isolation
Use Docker's internal networks to isolate services. Only your reverse proxy should be exposed to the internet (ports 80 and 443). All other services communicate through internal Docker networks. better-openclaw generates separate internal and external networks in its Docker Compose output, ensuring services like PostgreSQL and Redis are never directly accessible from the internet.
Authentication & SSO
Add Authentik for centralized single sign-on. It supports OIDC, SAML, and LDAP, and integrates with most self-hosted applications. better-openclaw includes Authentik as an optional service. For simpler setups, use Caddy's built-in basic auth or Traefik's forward auth middleware to protect sensitive dashboards.
Secrets Management
Never hardcode API keys or passwords in your Docker Compose file. better-openclaw generates a .env file with cryptographically random passwords for every service. For production, consider Vaultwarden (the Bitwarden-compatible password manager included in better-openclaw) or Docker secrets for more granular control.
Container Hardening
Run containers as non-root users when possible, enable read-only filesystems where supported, drop unnecessary Linux capabilities, and set no-new-privileges. Keep images updated with Watchtower (automatic container updates). Use CrowdSec (available in better-openclaw) for collaborative intrusion detection across your services.