Kubernetes requires extensive configuration, and keeping container security at the right level is always challenging. One of the best ways to tighten your clusters’ security is by implementing tactics that have become industry-standard.4 Here are 10 most important ones.It’s a good practice to have your objects use a secret in an environment variable since other parts of your system can access environment variables.
And sharing pod and host network namespaces enables network access to the host network from the pod, which breaks network isolation. That’s why you better set the hostNetwork parameter to false in PodSecurityPolicy.RBAC helps to define who has access to the Kubernetes API and on what permissions. In Kubernetes 1.6 and higher, RBAC is usually enabled by default. Since Kubernetes combines authorization controllers, make sure to disable the legacy Attribute Based Access Control when enabling RBAC.
Pick namespace-specific permissions over cluster-wide permissions. Even when debugging, don’t grant cluster administrator privileges. Otherwise, your container security may be compromised.Are your containers running without a read-only root file system? Using a read-only file system prevents malicious binaries from writing to a system or a system takeover by attackers.
You can achieve this by keeping Kubernetes control and data traffic isolated. Otherwise, they both flow through the same pipe. Open access to the data plane means that access is open to the control plane as well. Configure nodes with an ingress controller and set it to only allow connections from the master node via the specified port through the network access control list .
Another challenge teams experience around Kubernetes security is the prioritization of security issues – depending on the application’s size, prioritizing issues may become time-consuming.CAST AI’s Cloud Security feature constantly checks clusters against industry best practices, Kubernetes recommendations, and container security system benchmarks – and prioritizes them automatically to get you started right away.