An example computer-implemented method of preventing exploitation of software vulnerabilities includes determining that a software container is susceptible to a vulnerability, determining one or more soft spots required to exploit the vulnerability, and analyzing runtime behavior of the software container to determine if the software container uses the one or more soft spots. The method includes automatically applying a security policy that prevents the software container from using the one or more soft spots based on the analyzing indicating that the software container does not use the one or more soft spots at runtime.