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

Requirement for managing Secrets, including secure storage and access control

In terms of responsibilities, a Kubernetes cluster has a responsibility to securely contain Secrets and prevent unauthorized access. Every secret that is hosted on Kubernetes has been stored by an individual or an automated process. At some point in time, this secret that now resides on Kubernetes was in another system. This makes it important to store Secrets securely before they reach Kubernetes.

Secure storage

There are various tools dedicated to the purpose of secure storage. Take, for example, HashiCorp Vault, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Secret Manager, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Secrets Manager. These are external Secrets management solutions.

The benefit of those solutions is that they can be used as a standalone Secrets management system but can also be used directly from Kubernetes. It is feasible to use secure storage during development or even on CI/CD jobs.

A thing these types of...