Zero Trust Architecture
Introduction
Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) is a security framework that addresses the challenges discussed in the earlier section on Kubernetes security. It ensures that every user entity, whether inside or outside an enterprise network, undergoes authentication, authorization, and evaluation/validation based on their current role and security rules/policies. ZTA not only focuses on securing infrastructure but also data in transit and at rest.
When implementing ZTA, the following key aspects should be investigated and evaluated:
- Defining user identities, grouping them, and assigning appropriate credentials
- Identifying privileged accounts and assigning them to the correct user groups
- Studying and understanding the behavioral patterns of system components and defining policies to govern their interactions/communications
- Implementing authentication protocols and mitigating associated risks
- Identifying vulnerable libraries/artifacts and applying necessary security patches across the system
- Managing and securing applications on endpoints
- Continuously evaluating the effectiveness of defined controls in real-time.
Recommendations for Kubernetes Pod security
- Use containers built to run applications as non-root users
- Run containers with immutable file systems
- Static and dynamic scan of images for vulnerabilities
- Technical control to enforce security
Recommendations for Kubernetes network security
- Restrict access to control plane nodes by using a firewall
- Use authenticated and encrypted communication via Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates.
- Enforce limited access to the etcd server
- Use Kubernetes secrets instead of configuration to secure all the sensitive information of your application
- Restrict public access for worker nodes
Reference
- Hands-On Kubernetes, Service Mesh and Zero-Trust: Build and manage secure applications using Kubernetes and Istio, Swapnil Dubey, Mandar J. Kulkarni, BPB Publications, 2023