Summary

In this chapter, we started by introducing the basic concepts of threat modeling. We discussed the important assets, threats, and threat actors in Kubernetes environments. We discussed different security controls and mitigation strategies to improve the security posture of your Kubernetes cluster.

Then we walked through application threat modeling, taking into consideration applications deployed in Kubernetes, and compared it to the traditional threat modeling of monolithic applications. The complexity introduced by the Kubernetes design makes threat modeling more complicated, as we've shown: more assets to be protected and more threat actors. And more security control doesn't necessarily mean more safety.

You should keep in mind that although threat modeling can be a long and complex process, it is worth doing to understand the security posture of your environment. It's quite necessary to do both application threat modeling and infrastructure threat modeling together to better secure your Kubernetes cluster.

In the next chapter, to help you learn about securing your Kubernetes cluster to the next level, we will talk about the principle of least privilege and how to implement it in the Kubernetes cluster.