With managed Kubernetes, in other words, you don’t need to worry as much about security issues at the OS level on your nodes. The host infrastructure is professionally managed and monitored for security threats.Managed Kubernetes may also be more secure in two key respects: (Note that the extent of the management features that vendors deliver can vary significantly from one “managed” Kubernetes service to another, but that’s tangential to our discussion here.) Probably the first question that most teams ask themselves today when planning a Kubernetes installation is whether to use a managed Kubernetes service – such as Amazon AKS, Azure Kubernetes Service, or another Kubernetes platform that runs in a public cloud – or to deploy and manage Kubernetes themselves on infrastructure that they control.Ī managed Kubernetes service is almost always easier to set up and maintain because the Kubernetes provider handles at least some of the provisioning and maintenance tasks required to keep clusters running. So, which types of architectural strategies lead to the strongest security posture for Kubernetes? This article offers an answer to that question by talking through the high-level design choices that admins typically have to make when planning a Kubernetes environment, as well as by discussing what each element means from a security perspective. Likewise, there are security implications for third-party tools, like monitoring agents and service meshes, that you may choose to build into your Kubernetes architecture. A multi-cluster environment may be more secure in some respects than one that runs everything in a single cluster (although multiple clusters also increase complexity, which is a con from a security standpoint). In other words, Kubernetes architecture (the architectural strategy that you select when designing your Kubernetes environment) can have important implications for overall security.
Some are inherently more secure than others. Kubernetes environments come in many shapes, forms, and sizes.
How to Design the Most Secure Kubernetes Architecture