Kubernetes Hardening for Early-Stage Teams

Identity & Access

Why This Matters

Kubernetes is powerful — but dangerous if misconfigured. Early-stage companies often skip security under pressure to ship. This guide helps you shift left without blocking speed.

TL;DR

  • Lock down workloads with Pod Security Admission (PSA)
  • Use Network Policies to segment traffic
  • Enable Audit Logging in your managed Kubernetes service
  • Leverage OPA/Gatekeeper for policy enforcement

1. Use Pod Security Admission (PSA)

apiVersion: policy/v1
kind: PodSecurityPolicy
metadata:
  name: baseline-policy
spec:
  privileged: false
  runAsUser:
    rule: 'MustRunAsNonRoot'