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

CyberArk Conjur

Conjur from CyberArk is a Secrets management solution. It has a commercial and an open source version.

Conjur as a solution comes with the following benefits:

  • Role-based access control (RBAC)
  • Logging and auditing
  • Integration with Kubernetes
  • High availability

Let us take a closer look at Conjur and see how it achieves these qualities.

How Conjur works

Conjur requires the following components:

  • Reverse Nginx proxy
  • Conjur application
  • Database

The reverse proxy is used to handle the TLS termination. It sits in front of the Conjur application. The Conjur application is a Ruby-based application and is responsible for securely storing Secrets. This application is backed by a PostgreSQL database.

High availability

Conjur uses Raft to make high availability possible. It has a leader–follower architecture. The master will serve inbound traffic. In case of a master failure, a follower instance will be promoted...