One of the great things about Kubernetes is that it completely separates authentication and authorization. Authentication (Authn) meaning the act of identifying who the user is and authorization (Authz) meaning the act of working out if they’re allowed to perform some action. This can be thought of in terms of a Passport and a Visa.

One of the key Kubernetes security concepts is that workload identity is tied back to information that the orchestrator has. The orchestrator is actually the authoritative entity for what the actual workloads are in the platform. Kubernetes uses labels to select objects and to identify collections of objects that satisfy certain conditions. We, and others in the Kubernetes networking space, often talk about using Kubernetes ‘labels’ as identity bearers.

A Docker image contains an application and all its dependencies. As it also contains the numerous binaries and libraries of an OS, it’s important to make sure no vulnerabilities exist in its root filesystem, or at least no critical or major ones. Scanning an image within a CI/CD pipeline can ensure this additional level of security.