Red Hat Report: Cybersecurity Investment Gap for Kubernetes Solutions

Open-source software provider Red Hat has released the 2023 edition of their “State of Kubernetes Security” report that shows a cybersecurity investment gap for Kubernetes Solutions. The data, taken from an annual survey, with around 600 DevOps, engineering, and security professional respondents, shows that cybersecurity investment is lagging despite increased adoption rates for Kubernetes solutions.

Virtualization technologies, such as Kubernetes, have traditionally dwelled in the IT realm but are increasingly being deployed in industrial settings as IT and OT spaces continue to converge. Kubernetes provides a scalable and flexible platform for managing containerized applications, which encapsulates software and its dependencies within isolated units that can run consistently across different computing environments.

Increased flexibility, reliability, and agility are the primary drivers for adoption of cloud-native technologies, like containers, but security concerns are hindering these advantages. According to the survey, 67% of users had to delay application deployment due to cybersecurity issues, and 37% reported tangible revenue loss due to a cybersecurity incident.

Despite this widespread concern, more than a third of survey respondents reported that their company was not adequately investing in securing its containerized workloads.

So how can enterprises make their containerized workloads more secure? Red Hat offers three suggestions:

• Use Kubernetes-native security architectures and controls. Using the same infrastructure and its controls for application development and security reduces the learning curve and supports faster analysis and troubleshooting.
• Security should extend over the entire software life cycle. From build to runtime, users should utilize Kubernetes tools to build strong security into their assets right from the start. Evaluate using a container and Kubernetes security platform that incorporates DevOps best practices and internal controls as part of its configuration checks.
• Foster security awareness. Most companies do not have dedicated container security teams. Cybersecurity personnel must collaborate with technology users to ensure that everyone is aware of potential security vulnerabilities.

Read the Red Hat Kubernetes security report State of Kubernetes security report 2023 (redhat.com)