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Kubernetes users are widespread around the world, and so are Kubernetes security issues.
Several enterprises have put their trust into their ability not just to manage new app development complexities and do it on an extensive scale.
Moreover, their modernization initiatives need not be mentioned.
A recent survey conducted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), including 1,340 industry professionals, states that 78% of the respondents use open-source platforms for managing containerized workloads.
Despite being one of the most popular open-source container orchestration tools, Kubernetes users are intimidated by its security risks even today.
Kubernetes Top 5 Security Issues
1. Compliance and Hardening
While launching Kubernetes, you must be super focused on which options are turned on by default and which are not.
For example, pod security policies are not turned on by default and kept as a beta feature on this platform. But it is necessary to turn it on to secure a multi-tenant cluster.
Initially, it may seem challenging to understand the default features of Kubernetes, but it is essential that you get familiar with it.
Security benchmarks are a sensible option to harden various computing systems, including Kubernetes, against several cyber threats.
Developers and operators are more likely to face the need for regulatory systems than ever before to prevent various cyber threats and privacy issues.
Kubernetes and other contemporary cloud-native architectures offer tools to resolve security risks and regulatory demands.
All these security issues correspond to a container lifecycle stage. You must figure out a remedy for identified vulnerabilities and bugs during the development phase.
Hardening Kubernetes Securities:
- Ensure that the required cluster configuration is set and maintained.
- Access to the API server shall be over HTTPS.
- Authenticate communication among platforms via X.509 certificates.
- Encrypt your data.
2. Configuration Management of all Workloads
Besides managing the cluster configuration, users are required to manage all the workloads configurations deployed on the cluster.
You may rely on Helm Charts to automate software configuration and provisioning, not only for Kubernetes but for any complex application developed by several different services.
Unlike Kubernetes operators, Helm does not extend to second-day operations. It is useful only for Day 1 operations.
You can deploy, package, and manage complex applications through operators, which are programmed for Kubernetes.
Operators store human knowledge of various operations and encode it into application packages that are shared with the software.
Operators make sure that managed kubernetes services running on maintain standard configuration.
In case a deployed service is set to an unsupported configuration, the operators will reset the service to its default configuration.
3. Multi-tenant Cluster Management
Managing all the clusters and various workloads on them becomes difficult as Kubernetes scale up.
Multi-tenancy is an effective way to prevent unnecessary chaos. Kubernetes has evolved its multi-tenancy support system in recent years.
Vital capabilities to manage clusters are as follows:
● Namespaces
It helps managers to distinguish among multiple groups within a common physical cluster when used with role-based access control and network policies.
● Role-based access control (RBAC)
It sets permissions for users to perform a specific action within a cluster or a namespace. We recommend using default roles limited to users and teams cluster-wide or locally on each namespace. It will simplify the use of RBAC.
● Kubernetes resource quotas
It is used to determine the aggregate resource consumption rate for each namespace that helps to prevent the system from service denial and other threats. All Kubernetes clusters are set to undefined memory and CPU limits/requests by default.
● Micro-segmentation network policy
This feature helps to specify how different pod teams communicate with each other and various other network points. Namespace scopes the policies.
Ingress and egress traffic is allowed from and to pods in the concerned namespace in case there are no policies set within it.
4. Balancing security and agility
Initially, Kubernetes securities are built into the DevOps cycle, but adding ‘sec’ in the middle of this cycle may benefit the organizations.
Otherwise, they need to increase the security automation as much as possible into the pipeline.
Ensure your company is using the best security practices like automated units and functional tests.
Integrating automated security gates like vulnerability scanners are a must.
Besides, implementing security practices to a Kubernetes cluster may seem to increase complexity, but indeed it makes valuable business logic more visible.
Earlier, developers had to build the logic while making the code. These capabilities have made it possible to add logic to Kubernetes, simplifying developers’ work and increasing their deliverability of microservices.
5. Usage of tools and features
Kubernetes security risks are more likely to occur at the fundamental stages. Poor management of security capabilities can make it impossible for your company to achieve its security goals.
If that happens, your organization has to depend on a large collection of point products. However, there is no guarantee that these products will work well together.
Kubernetes has made significant efforts in enhancing its traditional security systems along with all capabilities regarding indulging, security, hardening, RBAC, operators, and others.