Kubernetes security Part 2/4 - Thinking in the Developers way

Kubernetes security delivers as promised. Kubernetes (K8s) may help make your clusters, workloads, and containers safer by providing a variety of security measures. You can fully benefit from the numerous advantages K8s offers while maintaining the security of your environment by adhering to Kubernetes security best practices and understanding how to handle Kubernetes security concerns.

The activities, procedures, and guidelines that should be followed to guarantee security in your Kubernetes installations are referred to as Kubernetes Security. This involves protecting containers, appropriately setting workloads, Kubernetes network security, and safeguarding your infrastructure, among other things.

Security problems with Kubernetes

There are several security concerns with Kubernetes, but the three most crucial ones are as follows:

Self-configuration is necessary since none of the security protections are set up when Kubernetes is installed from open source. The operator solely must understand how they operate and how to configure them.

It takes skill to deploy workloads securely: Developers and application teams who may not be familiar with all the details of Kubernetes may find it difficult to effectively protect their workloads, whether they use a Kubernetes distribution with pre-configured security measures or build it themselves.

Lack of built-in security: While Kubernetes provides tools and access restrictions to assist in building a secure cluster, it is lacking built-in security to guarantee the safety of the containers and code being executed on the cluster.

options for security in Kubernetes

some places to think about

There are many options in the K8s security solutions ecosystem, even though Kubernetes' built-in security solutions do not address all problems.

Some things to think about are:

Workload security: Most Kubernetes workloads operate within containers that are powered by Docker engines. No matter which engine is running on the back end, you would still be running containers even if you were using other container solutions (such as CRI-O or Containers) in parallel. These containers' code and associated packages must be secure at all times.

Configuring the workload The setup for deploying your apps on Kubernetes is often done in code, whether using Helm Charts, Kubernetes YAML, or other tools for templating.

The Kubernetes security rules that regulate how a workload is executed and what can and cannot happen in the case of a breach are impacted by this code. To restrict any breaches to the afflicted task and ensure that other services are not impacted, it may be helpful to limit each workload's CPU, memory, and networking to the maximum intended consumption.

Configuration of the cluster: Several Kubernetes security evaluation tools are accessible for your active clusters. These tools, among other things, verify compliance with CIS and other pertinent standards as well as Kubernetes security best practices.

Kubernetes networking: When it comes to Kubernetes, network security is crucial. It is important to consider pod communications, ingress, egress, service discovery, and—if necessary—service meshes (like Istio). Every service and device in the network is vulnerable when a cluster has been compromised. Therefore, it is crucial to make sure that your services and the communication between them are limited to what is required. This can help contain the danger and avert a significant network-wide compromise when paired with the use of encryption to make your computers and services secret.

Infrastructure protection and Securing your Kubernetes architecture, especially the master nodes, databases, and certificates, is essential since it runs a distributed application across several servers (using real or virtual networking and storage). A bad actor may have access to everything necessary to access your cluster and apps if they have successfully hacked your infrastructure.

Kubernetes Container Security with Cloud-Native Security

The primary unit of work in Kubernetes is the pod. A Kubernetes pod typically consists of a single container, while it can consist of many containers. Although Kubernetes security can manage how a pod runs, it does not check the containers to make sure they are secure and may be used. Instead, it is the user's responsibility to do this operation, including installing any necessary tooling.

BEST PRACTICES FOR CONTAINER SECURITY

Your clusters and workloads will be more secure if you adhere to these essential container security best practices:

1. Protect Your Images Stored in Containers

Everything included in the base image you select to build upon is inherited by your project. As a result, use simple basic pictures and include only what is necessary.

2. Protect your dependencies and code

Through ongoing scanning, protect your code and dependencies. To find open-source dependencies and any vulnerabilities they may have, Snyk Open Source does a complete dependency analysis on the code, and also there is a sentry and many more. It then assists developers in automatically fixing these issues. When there is a new version or an alternative that might lessen vulnerabilities, the tool should ideally be aware of your base image and notify you.

3. Protect the Additional Layers

Levels are added to containers, and these layers are often described in a Dockerfile. However, in the dependency tree of the tools you install, vulnerabilities are frequently discovered in libraries. Your technique for evaluating container vulnerability should:

Discover these weaknesses.

• Determine which layer or layers are to blame for the problem with the container picture.
• aid in dependency tracking.
• This will make it easier to determine which of your installed tools are exposing vulnerabilities.

4. Control Your Setting

You should be aware of the following two configuration security levels: Setting up the container engine

Arrangement of your workload

The default settings for the Docker Engine are often wise. Additionally, the container runtime will already be restricted if you're using a Kubernetes platform distribution (such as OpenShift, VMware Tanzu/PKS, AKS, EKS, or GKE). However, the user must ensure the security of the workload configuration in Kubernetes.

You should, at the very least, have rules for resource restrictions and workload security that are accepted by the development, operations, and security teams. The workload setup should ideally be tested in your continuous integration pipelines just like any other code as it is code-based.

There is a New perspective in which you can try getting the kuberntes deployment in the right track and start working to get the yaml and the manifests in the right track.

Getting Kubernetes security up and running

It might be challenging to know where to begin and how to maintain security with Kubernetes given the myriad security implications.

• To guarantee Kubernetes security, follow these three recommendations:
• Process and People Are Crucial
• Utilize a Kubernetes Distribution Service Supported Workload Monitoring

1. THE IMPORTANCE OF PEOPLE AND PROCESS

Your people and processes are just as crucial to security as the technological part. The whole IT and development chain—developers, security, infrastructure, and operations teams—are impacted by running containers and Kubernetes. It's best to start small and expand your knowledge base and core specialists across fields for this reason. Don't, however, try to do it all by yourself. Utilize the sizable Kubernetes community, auxiliary tools, and Kubernetes service providers with experience in K8 deployment. To make sure you're adhering to the most recent best practices, these partners may also offer continuous Kubernetes security evaluations.

2. USE A KUBERNETES DISTRIBUTION SERVICE THAT IS SUPPORTED

It is almost always preferable to use a supported Kubernetes distribution from a vendor you can trust rather than try to configure it for your production environment on your own. They provide built-in platform security for role-based access management and more with over 90 certified conformant Kubernetes releases. Even the finest distribution, however, may fall short in some areas, such as network security, admission controllers, and workload pod security policies. While picking the best distribution for your purposes is essential for Kubernetes security, this does not make it unnecessary to check for vulnerabilities or misconfigurations related to Kubernetes and container security.

3. KUBERNETES WORKLOADS MONITORING SECURITY TOOLS

While Kubernetes is an orchestrator and a collection of APIs that may be used to create and manage a variety of workloads, it is not a stand-alone solution for the majority of production situations. To achieve the highest security levels, it instead uses customizations and outside tools. This picture may be finished by layering the tools. To keep an eye on active workloads, think about employing the Kubernetes security tools listed below:

Tools for network monitoring and behavioral analysis: Every application has a pattern. However, adjustments (such as a new version, marketing initiative, a viral marketing campaign, or a security incident) may lead it to stray from this trend. For any security breaches to be rapidly mitigated, understanding these abnormalities and their causes is crucial. The drawback is that this might be challenging or expensive to execute since skilled operators are required to actively monitor your tools. Specialized professionals are needed to interpret these signals and determine whether action is necessary, even for the most sophisticated applications that detect abnormalities.

Tools for logging and keeping track of things: These are included in the behavioral analysis category. A microservice platform by definition makes use of several services that divide your container logs. Additionally, a request might hop across many services until it is fulfilled. It is consequently challenging to obtain a comprehensive view of individual requests and identify anomalies without specialized tools that gather and store all your logs in a centralized setting. It is frequently necessary to use tools and procedures designed for these settings since logging and monitoring tools behave differently in containers, particularly in Kubernetes.

Tools for networking and storage are handled through plugins rather than being built-in. Although you will often have the option to select different settings, your distribution will give defaults. For instance, you could at some time realize that a service mesh is necessary.

4. DETERMINE AND CORRECT VULNERABILITIES AND ENSURE SECURE WORKLOADS

By removing security flaws from your application code, dependencies, and containers, you can secure your operating workloads and decrease the blast radius. A list of vulnerabilities and flaws is insufficient since many of these security problems may be traced back to code, such as apps, container build files, or workload parameters. Make sure the DevOps and development teams in charge of addressing these problems are prepared for this.

Using Kubernetes, the following are some recommended practices for addressing and preventing such problems:

• Run privileged pods without executing containers as root: You want to restrict access to the rest of the system if someone enters the container.
• Limit the resources in the container: If a container is infiltrated, this can stop Denial-of-Service (DoS) assaults.
• Configuring a secure pod Use Kubernetes pod security policies with YAML: This may appear like a repeat: Why bother specifying defining this in the workload setup if your pod security policy states that containers cannot run as root? There are two primary causes:

1. When a developer deploys a task and it makes it to production only to fail the pod security policy, it may be quite upsetting. Kubernetes pod security rules are implemented at runtime. However, by mandating this in the workload configuration, the policy is applied to every instance of the workload, even single-node configurations on developer workstations.
2. You could use numerous Kubernetes distributions, each with unique built-in settings, as your usage of the system increases. Though having security incorporated into the workload setup adds an extra degree of protection, it is hoped that you will be able to establish pod security settings anywhere.

Reasons for Kubernetes security are significant

Kubernetes is the subject of far more security discussion than other software platforms, even though every application and platform has to be adequately protected. How come this is the case? First off, Kubernetes may be used by tiny apps (including those operating on a local development workstation) as well as ones with large clusters spanning up to 5,000 nodes, each needing a particular set of security controls and rules. Second, compared to other software platforms, Kubernetes makes security simple by making security a top priority in every area of its architecture.