Kubernetes Version 1.23: What’s New for Security? 

Like clockwork, a new Kubernetes release is upon us, with loads of interesting new features. A couple of the key features in Kubernetes 1.23 are hitting the beta level and will be enabled by default. In this post, we’ll explain what they mean for security, both in terms of improving cluster security and what you …

One of the main challenges developers face is how to manage security risks when deploying applications to Kubernetes clusters. A great way to address this early is by applying security hardening to the application manifests during the development process. In this post, we run down 10 ways that developers can apply hardening to their applications.

Even with Kubernetes’ new, longer release cycle in place, it doesn’t seem long since the last version came along with all its new features, but 1.22 is upon us. As ever, there’s an interesting mix of new features that are starting their maturation process as alpha releases and other features that are graduating to beta …

With the move to cloud native development comes potentially increased risk of services that are exposed to the Internet and can easily be discovered by attackers. When combined with the fast pace of change in Kubernetes versions, there’s real risk of being one vulnerability away from a security incident. Recently I carried out some research …

When you’re operating Kubernetes clusters, an important area of focus is in ensuring your authorization model is correct and provides users with the least privileges needed for them to carry out their roles. As such, blanket cluster-admin privileges should never be used and in particular the in-built system:masters group should be avoided.

Last year, we first released Starboard Operator, which automates vulnerability scanning and configuration auditing of Kubernetes workloads. We’re now pleased to announce the latest release (v0.10), which is focused on infrastructure and adds CIS Kubernetes Benchmark testing using kube-bench. The operator automatically discovers nodes and runs kube-bench on each node to get the benchmark score. …

One of the challenges of managing containerized environments is how to store sensitive information that’s needed for the operation of the applications running in those environments. Kubernetes provides a built-in secrets object type, but a common comment about them is that, from a technical standpoint, they’re just the same as other object types like Config …

As with every new Kubernetes release there are a great number of new features, however there are a couple of key changes which could have impacts to security and are worth looking at in more details. In addition to the deprecation of PodSecurityPolicies, we’ll also look at some newly promoted features being put in place …

To improve your Kubernetes security, you need to control and limit what pods can be created and deployed in your environment. For this, Kubernetes has provided a beta feature called Pod Security Policy (PSP), which soon will be deprecated and replaced with a standard called Pod Security Standards (PSS). In this blog, you’ll learn what …

Published sources of vulnerabilities in cloud native environments are an important resource, but the information is often spread out across a variety of platforms. Since 80% of cloud native software is based on open source, this makes getting the most relevant and up-to-date vulnerability information a real challenge. Our new Aqua Vulnerability Database (AVD) consolidates …

Overly permissive defaults associated with roles and K8s subjects, such as service accounts, add risks to the attack surface of Kubernetes. And attempting to manually understand these risks and enforce least privilege rights in a Kubernetes environment is time-consuming and prone to human error. With the introduction of Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM), we’ve now …

The adoption of Kubernetes has more than doubled since 2017 and continues to grow without any signs of slowing down. Over the last few years, the Kubernetes ecosystem has significantly matured, and we’ve seen a lot of consolidation in the market. It now spans a wide range of well-established cloud and on-premises solutions designed to …