CISOs should consider developing and managing efficient Kubernetes and container integration strategies to ensure the security of these environments.
Kubernetes offers enterprises robust automation capabilities for DevOps teams to deploy, manage and ensure container application availability. Integrating containers exposes the enterprise’s IT infrastructure to various security threats. According to a recent report by Red hat titled “State of Kubernetes Security,” 94% of the survey respondents consider security as a top concern in container securities. Moreover, the respondents also witnessed at least one security breach in their Kubernetes ecosystem in 2021.
CISO should consider evaluating the agility developed by containerized ecosystem and protect against threats infiltrating the Kubernetes environment.
SecOps teams need to develop and implement a robust cyber security posture to protect enterprises from full-blown cyber-attacks. Here are a few ways to develop a cyber-resilient architecture:
Also Read: Three Effective Methods for Securing IoT Devices Against Cyber-Attacks
Identify the misconfiguration
Container orchestration is very declarative in its nature which results in misconfigurations that malicious actors can bank on to infiltrate the enterprise’s network stack. Such misconfigurations increase the attack surface areas of the cloud-native applications and expose sensitive data to unauthorized users. Manual errors and misconfigurations in the tech architecture are one of the most significant cybersecurity risks to enterprises. Inbuilt Kubernetes settings do not offer the security that modern enterprises require. Because businesses focus on gaining business agility, they tend to overlook the default misconfigurations in the production flow. Enabling scripts/shells command into the containers or executing container as root without any reason leads to vulnerable deployments. CISOs should consider evaluating the entire Kubernetes ecosystem to spot the misconfigurations and configure them to strengthen cyber security.
Security breaches during runtime
One another significant challenge with misconfigurations is that they only become evident after the deployment of the containers. Security breaches during the run time can have unrecognized malware activating inside the container images, privileged attacks, or poor access controls that grant access to unauthorized containers to execute. Organizations need to develop security in all the development phases, and orchestration pipelines that neglect runtime security eradicates the last defense layer to protect the Kubernetes environment from various security threats and risks.
Stringent access management policies for Kubernetes dashboard
Modern enterprise tech stack might have a lot of unsecured and open access dashboards. Cybercriminals use robust tools to identify the open ports across the internet and exploit them to infiltrate the IT infrastructure to get access to secured data. CISOs should consider turning off the Kubernetes web user interface because they need access to highly privileged service accounts. It is one of the most effective ways to strengthen Kubernetes security.
Also Read: Emerging Security tools for the modern enterprises
Strengthening the Kubernetes security with DevSecOps
As the cybercriminal industry is becoming more sophisticated, security is one of the prime concerns for modern enterprise tech crack. CISOs should consider integrating security in the DevOps workflows to ingrain cybersecurity right at the start of the development. The same report shared by Red hat highlights that nearly 78% of the respondents have integrated DevSecOps in the earlier stages of development. With a robust DevSecOps strategy, enterprises can automate the security throughout the application lifecycles. Irrespective of the potential security concerns that Kubernetes exposes enterprises to, businesses are adopting this technology because of the immense benefits. CISOs should consider exploring, evaluating, and selecting containers and Kubernetes security tools that enable businesses to embrace the best DevOps practices and internal controls to evaluate all the configurations. Enterprises can analyze the Kubernetes configurations for the security posture, so the developers can concentrate on feature delivery.
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