Book Image

Kubernetes Secrets Handbook

By : Emmanouil Gkatziouras, Rom Adams, Chen Xi
Book Image

Kubernetes Secrets Handbook

By: Emmanouil Gkatziouras, Rom Adams, Chen Xi

Overview of this book

Securing Secrets in containerized apps poses a significant challenge for Kubernetes IT professionals. This book tackles the critical task of safeguarding sensitive data, addressing the limitations of Kubernetes encryption, and establishing a robust Secrets management system for heightened security for Kubernetes. Starting with the fundamental Kubernetes architecture principles and how they apply to the design of Secrets management, this book delves into advanced Kubernetes concepts such as hands-on security, compliance, risk mitigation, disaster recovery, and backup strategies. With the help of practical, real-world guidance, you’ll learn how to mitigate risks and establish robust Secrets management as you explore different types of external secret stores, configure them in Kubernetes, and integrate them with existing Secrets management solutions. Further, you'll design, implement, and operate a secure method of managing sensitive payload by leveraging real use cases in an iterative process to enhance skills, practices, and analytical thinking, progressively strengthening the security posture with each solution. By the end of this book, you'll have a rock-solid Secrets management solution to run your business-critical applications in a hybrid multi-cloud scenario, addressing operational risks, compliance, and controls.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1:Introduction to Kubernetes Secrets Management
6
Part 2: Advanced Topics – Kubernetes Secrets in a Production Environment
10
Part 3: Kubernetes Secrets Providers

Integrating AWS Secrets Manager with EKS

To integrate AWS Secrets Manager with Kubernetes, we shall utilize the Secrets Store CSI Driver . As expected, AWS provides us with Secrets Store CSI Driver (https://github.com/aws/secrets-store-csi-driver-provider-aws). To integrate the driver with Kubernetes, we will create a Kubernetes cluster.

EKS cluster on AWS

As defined earlier, EKS in AWS stands for Elastic Kubernetes Service. We have the option to set up a Kubernetes cluster on the AWS cloud just like every other cloud. We will focus on the managed service offering for the purpose of this chapter because it requires less maintenance and setup overhead.

If there is already an existing EKS cluster available, the Terraform setup instructions can be ignored since the corresponding command-line arguments for AWS will be provided.

Implementing a Kubernetes cluster on AWS can require different amounts of effort based on the installation you want to achieve. One option is to create...