Skill UI

Guides implementing Kubernetes NetworkPolicy, RBAC, PodSecurityPolicy, Pod Security Standards, and OPA Gatekeeper constraints to enforce defense-in-depth across clusters, covering multi-tenant protection, admission control, and Istio service mesh policies.

This skill provides comprehensive methods for detecting and preventing privilege escalation within Kubernetes pods and containers. It details using runtime tools like Falco for monitoring syscalls and capabilities, and implementing admission controls via OPA Gatekeeper or Pod Security Admission to enforce security best practices, thereby hardening the cluster against unauthorized access and dangerous configurations.

This guide details how to implement Kubernetes Pod Security Standards (PSS) using the Pod Security Admission (PSA) controller. PSS defines three mandatory security levels—Privileged, Baseline, and Restricted—for container workloads. It is essential for enhancing security posture, ensuring compliance, and migrating away from deprecated PodSecurityPolicy (PSP) controls by applying namespace labels and defining compliant pod specifications.

OPA Gatekeeper is a powerful Kubernetes admission controller that enforces policies using Rego rules. It utilizes ConstraintTemplates and Constraints to validate, mutate, or deny API requests at the cluster admission stage. This tool is essential for implementing policy-as-code practices, ensuring that Kubernetes deployments adhere to organizational security standards, compliance requirements, and best practices, such as mandating labels or blocking privileged containers.

Pod Security Admission (PSA) is a built-in Kubernetes admission controller designed to enforce Pod Security Standards (Baseline, Restricted, Privileged) at the namespace level. It serves as a crucial replacement for the deprecated PodSecurityPolicy (PSP), allowing users to implement robust security controls and maintain compliance. By applying specific labels, administrators can set enforcement modes (enforce, audit, warn) to harden container environments against unauthorized privilege escalation and security risks.

This skill covers implementing Open Policy Agent (OPA) and Gatekeeper for robust policy-as-code enforcement. Learn to write complex Rego policies, deploy OPA Gatekeeper as a Kubernetes admission controller, and integrate policy evaluation into CI/CD pipelines to enforce security and compliance across clusters.