Security Challenges: Risks, Prevention, and Policy Strategies
Let’s start from the beginning.
When we talk about security you shouldn’t take it just as a set of technical measures and administrative restrictions. While various software tools, role-based access controls, and technical configurations are available to enhance security, the real pain points in corporate security often start at the management and organizational levels. Therefore, it is crucial to identify and address security vulnerabilities at the earliest stages. To save costs and prevent serious problems you should avoid the following practices:
Lack of and Non-Compliance with Security Standards: Lack of and Non-Compliance with Security Standards: At the management level, security issues are often pushed aside or aren’t addressed immediately when setting priorities. Later, when these issues are finally taken into account, adding security features (like network policies in Kubernetes) often creates problems and requires extra work and resources that weren’t planned for. It’s smarter to plan, consider the necessary steps to ensure a solid security level, and put the right tools in place from the start.
Using outdated containers, images, or libraries with vulnerabilities: For example, in automated Docker builds, it can cause data loss or allow malicious software to be deployed. You should regularly update your software, containers, and libraries to fix identified issues. If one container in a cluster has a vulnerability, it can spread attacks to other containers in the same cluster. However, you can stop it by setting up container isolation.
Ignoring standard security measures: It’s a must to keep things like firewalls, encryption keys, security certificates, network policies, access controls, authentication tools, and ways to isolate clusters monitored and updated. If secrets are stored not securely, private keys or certificates could accidentally become accessible, leading to compromise. Your application could also become vulnerable if Kubernetes or Docker containers are not set up correctly, in case of issues with internal communication, process control, or file system access. Incorrect access settings, open API servers, and disabled authentication can also be missed during security checks, leaving your system at risk.
Placing nodes on public IP addresses instead of inside a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): It creates unnecessary public entry points to your infrastructure. It’s not a good practice and can attract hackers to parts of your system, like the Ingress controller.
Fixing this issue without reinstalling clusters is hard, but possible if you’re using an on-premise setup. In the cloud, you might need to reinstall clusters, and if there are many, it could take a lot of time and effort. Also, using unauthorized connections between pods in a cluster lets vulnerable Kubernetes containers interact with others, potentially leading to security breaches. You can prevent it using tools like Istio or an API Gateway to filter connections at the application layer. However, it can be challenging to manage, if network policies aren’t enabled in Kubernetes.
Medium and large companies hire SecOps engineers to handle security issues. These experts know security standards well and find vulnerabilities in application code or infrastructure setup, then alert the team. Sometimes, they fix the issues themselves, but if the problem is in a developer’s code or container, SecOps asks them to fix it to prevent it from happening again in future updates. Prioritizing security tasks is important because if there’s a breach or security failure, the whole team’s reputation can be damaged.
Improving security needs a step-by-step approach, like regularly updating and checking configurations, managing access, monitoring security, and training staff. If companies don’t have a specific budget for this, some security risks might only show up while the system is running. When you don’t pay enough attention to monitoring or responding to security issues, it can leave vulnerabilities unnoticed, and these become more expensive to fix over time.
That’s all for today. Take care of your security, your infrastructure, and your software as a whole.
