Streamline Network Security with Centralized and Automated Network Policy Management

October 4, 2022

Introduction

In a previous blog post, Securing Your Kubernetes Environments via Network Policies, we alluded to the value that network policies bring to Kubernetes environments in terms of isolation and reducing the lateral attack surface area, while also articulating some of the challenges around operationalizing network policies.

Challenges

To summarize, these challenges include the following:

• Integration and standardization of network policies: The operational burden in defining and enforcing network policies across a heterogeneous fleet of clusters can be significant. Lack of centralization and standardization can lead to poor security outcomes.
• Role-based access controls: It is extremely difficult to implement role-based access controls for network traffic flow visibility and network policy creation. Ideally, you want to restrict access based on ownership.
• Visibility and data retention: For debugging and validation purposes, having the ability to check historical network configurations and flows is essential but can be burdensome.

Without solving these challenges, you have disjointed solutions that may solve some network security challenges but can also lead to misconfigurations.

Challenge 1: Integration and Standardization of Network Policies

As a platform admin, one of the biggest challenges when working with Kubernetes is integrating open source software and maintaining it across a fleet of clusters. Today there are open-source Container Network Interface (CNI) offerings like Cilium and Calico. However, operational overheads such as installation and upgrades must be managed effectively.

Challenge 2: Role-based Access Controls

Lack of fine-tuned solutions often results in over-privileged access to developers. This can lead to:

• Siloed misconfigurations and exposure.
• Leakage of sensitive information/data.

Using Rafay’s network policy management, self-service can be enabled while ensuring governance by providing users the ability to configure policies for only the resources they should access.

Challenge 3: Visibility & Data Retention

While real-time network visibility is beneficial for application troubleshooting, historical network flows are essential for auditing access patterns. Current solutions often lack the capabilities needed for developer self-service in network troubleshooting. Historical data must be integrated into the platform to enhance usability.

Using Rafay’s network visibility dashboard, both developers and admins can access historical traffic flows for their applications without additional setup required!

Conclusion

Network Policies are essential for Kubernetes governance and security. Managing and creating them with Rafay allows platform teams to do so at scale, with governance aligned with organizational policies, and provides visibility without integration headaches. Check out our Getting Started Guide to learn more and to start using network policies in Rafay in under 30 minutes!