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

The future state of Kubernetes

When thinking about the future state of a piece of software or a solution, there are two considerations:

  • The desires or needs that are linked to specific, future, and missing use cases
  • The existing roadmap, its relationship with the current architecture, and how to include future enhancements

As we’ve observed in this handbook, there is not one software to address all needs. It often involves combining multiple projects and composing a solution toward our end goal while managing Secrets for both the Kubernetes platform and applications running on it. As such, let’s have a solution-driven overview of what we would expect for the future.

Food for thought and enhancements

Starting with the native stack offered by the Kubernetes project, the proposed changes and roadmap are documented in KEP-3299. The same goes for the design documents from the SIG in charge of CSI Secrets Store.

Generally speaking, and with all respect...