A method of automatic and dynamic environment discovery and policy adaptation for a containerized environment is disclosed. A plurality of traffic monitoring policies for acquiring and monitoring data traffic transmitted between one or more components of a containerized environment are accessed. The containerized environment includes a plurality of software-implemented containers. The traffic monitoring policies are caused to be applied to one or more components in the containerized environment. A change to a configuration of the containerized environment is automatically detected. In response, one or more containers of the plurality of software-implemented containers are automatically identified as containers affected by the change. Based on that identification, a modification of a traffic monitoring policy is then automatically determined to produce a modified traffic monitoring policy, and the modified traffic monitoring policy is caused to be applied to one or more components in the containerized environment.