Security is a very important topic in IT. So in this article we take a close look into the different layers of security in Kubernetes and how we can secure our cluster. Here we will only have an overview about the different layers. In further article we will dive into the implementation

Security Overview

In the picture below the three different layers of security in Kubernetes are described.

Application Security

• Secure Dockerfiles
• Code checks
• Image building and signing

Kubernetes Security

Workload analysis:

• Static analysis
• Runtime analysis
• Pod/Deployment configuration
• Pod Security Admission (PSA)

Request to resource object:

• Access to the cluster (1 + 2)
• Admission control (3 + 4)
• API-Server security
• ETCD encryption

Kubernetes Setup:

• Benchmarks (e.g. CIS)
• Conformance tests
• Kubernetes distribution

Linux Security

• Linux distribution
• Firewall
• Host-based Intrusion Detection System (HIDS)