Kubernetes Security Best Practices
Kubernetes is an open source orchestration platform for containerized workflows. It is the best way to manage – or orchestrate – large clusters of containers at scale. Sometimes abbreviated as K8s, Kubernetes helps you efficiently manage clusters of hosts running Linux containers.
In the age of containers, Kubernetes has become a popular open source project and key building block for modern tech infrastructure. Containers need to be managed, and Kubernetes helps with tasks such as scheduling, load balancing, and distribution, while making sure container workloads run as intended. With Kubernetes, you can deploy and manage cloud-native applications anywhere independent of cloud-specific requirements, avoiding infrastructure lock-in.
Kubernetes, which is Greek for helmsman or pilot, is exploding in popularity. According to a survey of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) end user community, Kubernetes use has increased from 58% of organizations using or evaluating the technology in 2018 to 96% in 2022. With their rise in popularity, security should be a primary concern and not an afterthought.
What Is Kubernetes Security?
Kubernetes security is a set of tools, processes, and practices that are recommended to keep your Kubernetes platform secure. Securing Kubernetes platforms can be quite complicated, because Kubernetes itself is quite a complex system of components. So, it’s important to understand how it works and how various kinds of vulnerabilities can enter your system when using Kubernetes.
Making Kubernetes secure involves addressing these different vulnerabilities and risks that can affect the different layers of a Kubernetes cluster. To take a comprehensive approach, you need to ensure that you implement security in application clusters, containers, code, and microservices.??
Kubernetes Security And The Cloud-Native Environment
Though Kubernetes has several built-in security advantages -– for example, container images are usually replaced, not patched or updated, which leads to better version control -– its increase in use means more opportunity for exposure. Because Kubernetes is a relatively new and complex technology, it is also highly attractive to hackers.
When addressing Kubernetes security, it is nearly impossible to separate the Kubernetes cluster from the other layers of cloud computing. These layers include the application or code itself, the container image, the Kubernetes cluster, and the cloud or networking layer as shown in the image below. Each layer builds on the previous layer, and all layers must be secured to achieve defense in depth.
Kubernetes Security Issues And DevOps
Another way to think more specifically about Kubernetes security from a developer point of view is to look at it across four distinct stages of the DevOps pipeline:
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Kubernetes security begins in the build stage when writing the code that becomes the container image. Although Kubernetes isn’t necessarily involved during the build and packaging stage, a secure environment starts with assessing the risk associated with any code being deployed. Application security best practices and testing are important here, and any effort to shift security left will pay dividends by avoiding future problems in deployment and production.
In this stage, you need to make sure that your container image is up to date, free from security vulnerabilities, and is compliant with your licensing policies. Containers are built-in layers, and often have no canonical list of what open source components have been included in the final build of the container image. To address this, you need to scan containers to determine which open source libraries are in play inside the application, including going through any dependencies that are brought in through a package manager like Maven or npm. By discovering and identifying all open source components in play, you can identify any known vulnerabilities, establish which images are at risk as new vulnerabilities are discovered, and track the licenses associated with specific libraries. Tracking license compliance may not be a security risk, but it can have a downstream effect like exposing proprietary code if an incompatible license is included.
Ensuring your base images are regularly scanned is the first step to securing your Kubernetes environment.?
Kubernetes Security During Deployment?
When deploying Kubernetes, you are given a powerful set of controls to secure clusters and their applications. Configuring these controls requires an intimate knowledge of Kubernetes as well as the deployment’s security requirements. Don’t use defaults! It only leads to unnecessary (and perhaps even negligent) exposure. At the very least, you should limit the scope of user permissions, limit direct access to Kubernetes nodes, and create network segmentation so that containers communicate only with the containers they are supposed to.
Scanning at this stage remains of paramount importance. Container images must be built using secure base images. You need to implement continuous security vulnerability scanning and regularly apply security updates to your environment. Scanning is not a one-off event. In addition, when launching containers in your Kubernetes environment, only use images from image registries on allow lists.
Kubernetes Security In Production
Application security in runtime is very different from the build stage. Notably, network security is more complex. Best practices for network security in Kubernetes go beyond basic networking and leverage the container network interface (CNI) to implement a more robust networking layer that includes either multi-tenant support, network policies, or both.
With a multi-tenant network, each namespace within the Kubernetes cluster gets a private addressable subnet and can only access pods in other namespaces that are specifically exposed as services. Open vSwitch is a great example of a networking layer for Kubernetes that has multi-tenant support.
Network policies in most next-generation networking layers are available to be deployed via Kubernetes. Project Calico is an example of a widely used networking layer that has been built from the ground up to support network policies with containers. Network policies allow cluster administrators to predefine network access control lists that control which ports are accessible and which services can be accessed.
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