Checklists 🇮🇳 Indian Mandate Aligned 8 min read

Kubernetes Cluster Hardening & Pod Security Standard Checklist (AWS EKS ap-south-1 & Sovereign Cloud)

Comprehensive technical checklist for hardening production Kubernetes clusters across AWS EKS Mumbai (ap-south-1), Azure Pune, and sovereign Indian private clouds. Aligned with CIS Kubernetes Benchmark v1.8, NSA/CISA Kubernetes Hardening Guide, and CERT-In 2022 incident logging mandates. Covers control plane isolation, mTLS Service Mesh, Pod Security Standards (Restricted Profile), network policies, and eBPF runtime threat detection.

By BlueCiphr Cloud Security Practice • Lead CEH & PenTest+ Auditors

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Interactive Technical Checklist (9 Verification Checkpoints)

[Control Plane & IAM] Disable public access to the Kubernetes API server endpoint; restrict administration to private corporate VPN or AWS DirectConnect.

Mandate: RBI Perimeter Isolation
[Control Plane & IAM] Implement IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA) with fine-grained least-privilege policies; eliminate static long-lived AWS keys.

Mandate: Cloud Least Privilege Standard
[Control Plane & IAM] Enable AWS CloudWatch / Wazuh forwarding for API server, audit, authenticator, and controller-manager log streams (180-day retention).

Mandate: CERT-In 180-Day Log Directive
[Pod & Container Security] Enforce Kubernetes Pod Security Admission (PSA) with the 'Restricted' profile enabled across all production application namespaces.

Mandate: CIS Benchmark Control 5.2
[Pod & Container Security] Set 'securityContext.readOnlyRootFilesystem: true' and mount ephemeral storage solely via emptyDir volumes.

Mandate: Immutable Container Policy
[Pod & Container Security] Mandate non-root container execution ('runAsNonRoot: true', 'runAsUser: 10001') and explicitly drop all capabilities with 'drop: [ALL]'.

Mandate: Privilege Escalation Defense
[Network & Traffic Security] Deploy default-deny Ingress and Egress NetworkPolicies to prevent lateral movement between disparate service pods.

Mandate: Microsegmentation Mandate
[Network & Traffic Security] Enforce mTLS (Mutual TLS) encryption for all pod-to-pod communications via Istio or Cilium Service Mesh.

Mandate: Zero Trust Traffic Encryption
[Runtime Threat Detection] Install eBPF-based runtime monitoring (Falco / Tetragon) to alert on unexpected process execution or unauthorized /etc modifications.

Mandate: Active SOC Incident Response

🇮🇳 Cloud Infrastructure Standard: CIS Kubernetes Benchmark & CERT-In Sovereign Cloud Audit

Misconfigured Kubernetes clusters represent the #1 ingress vector for ransomware in modern cloud deployments. This checklist provides senior DevOps and security engineers with actionable YAML configurations and command-line verification scripts.

### Hardening Kubernetes for Regulated Indian Workloads In high-velocity engineering organizations, microservices are deployed dozens of times a day. Without automated admission controllers and kernel-level runtime enforcement, a single vulnerable container can lead to total cluster takeover and AWS account compromise. ### Key Implementation Principles 1. **Eliminate Node SSH Access**: Adopt managed node groups with AWS Systems Manager (SSM) Session Manager, disallowing direct port 22 access. 2. **Admission Governance with Kyverno / OPA Gatekeeper**: Automatically reject any pod deployment attempting to mount the host Docker socket or run as privileged. 3. **Secret Encryption at Rest**: Enable AWS KMS envelope encryption for all Kubernetes Secrets in etcd.

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