Container orchestration systems make companies face up to security issues and threats to their projects. These potential difficulties may even delay the rollout of their services. In this article, we want to spell out what problems developers may experience and how Kubernetes helps them mitigate cyber threats.
Blind spots
Blind spots are one of the key security issues associated with containerization. These issues arise after you deploy many containers, making monitoring cloud-based critical infrastructure components difficult. Employees find it harder to identify who developed the application and whether it’s secure.
In addition, containers are the components that follow the “set it and forget it” principle. After the rollout, no one monitors them for suspicious activity or relevance. All of which creates an additional security risk for your project.
To avoid this happening, Kubernetes creates security groups that track security gaps, wrong settings, and excessive permissions to access data, libraries, middleware, and other components.
Reliable image registries
Containerization technology is highly dependent on container images. If the images are not signed, received from a verified registry, or reviewed, you may face a security risk. For that reason, companies have to follow a strict policy on the use of image registries.
Scanning these components for vulnerabilities can be a challenging task for companies, but Kubernetes secure can simplify the process of finding whitelisted images.
Network policy
When you deploy your applications, containers and modules work closely together. If any of the containers get hacked, the scale of the threat will depend on how widely it integrates into other components. Therefore, companies have to monitor internal traffic or segment their infrastructure.
Alternatively, you need to create and implement a network policy that follows the principle of least privilege. In this case, it will decide which components can communicate with each other or with other network endpoints.
If you run a continuously scalable project, implementing these network policies can be a daunting task, but Kubernetes provides a ready-made set of tools. These tools act like a firewall and set permissions for communication between containers, minimizing cyber threats.
Configuration options
According to DevOps principles, container orchestration systems aim to make developing and deploying applications faster rather than isolate components. Consequently, developers can settle for the default configuration options. However, in doing so they face additional cyber threats. For example, secrets, such as storage and access to cyber keys, can create a vulnerability.
Kubernetes helps companies configure the system to ensure that secrets get mounted as read-only volumes in their containers, rather than exposed as environment variables.
Executing and monitoring processes
Potential threats periodically show up in running containers. In this case, IT experts need to handle the situation in real time by destroying the affected component and recreating it using a template. You need to stick to exactly the same procedure when implementing unscheduled updates. Also, other components in your infrastructure should remain unchanged.
When replacing containers in an emergency, a developer may not track which container processes are running at a particular point in time or may not notice excessive or malicious processes.
Kubernetes tools not only help you replace vulnerable containers but also add this data to your CI/CD pipeline for use in future build and deployment cycles.
By implementing Kubernetes orchestration systems, companies solve significant security issues such as getting rid of blind spots, setting up network policies, and eliminating vulnerable components painlessly. To recap, the process of integrating and configuring Kubernetes is quite complicated and requires the full attention of experienced specialists. SHALB’s DevOps outsourcing team is here to help you with all of that: our certified Kubernetes engineers provide advice and set up workflows right on time.
