Securing Modern Applications in Amazon EKS with AVX ONE CLM for Kubernetes

Modern applications are increasingly deployed in containers to leverage scalability, availability, and simplified maintenance. Migrating legacy applications to managed Kubernetes services like Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) provides significant benefits such as automated orchestration, self-healing capabilities, load balancing, and seamless scalability across both cloud and hybrid environments.

Amazon EKS allows development teams to focus on their applications while benefiting from Kubernetes orchestration and the reliability of AWS infrastructure. This combination provides a powerful foundation for modern cloud-native application deployment.

The Importance of Security in Kubernetes

While Amazon EKS offers tremendous benefits, securing Kubernetes environments demands a defense-in-depth strategy covering the ‘4 Cs’: Cloud, Cluster, Container, and Code. Implementing a layered approach to security is essential to protect the infrastructure, orchestration platform, and the applications running within it. One of the most critical elements of this strategy is certificate lifecycle management (CLM) in Kubernetes.

SSL/TLS Certificates in Amazon EKS: A Shared Responsibility

In Amazon EKS, SSL/TLS certificates are crucial for establishing trust and maintaining secure and encrypted communication channels between services in the Kubernetes cluster. However, many application owners mistakenly believe that AWS’s infrastructure-level security extends to application-level certificate management—which is not the case.

AWS secures the underlying infrastructure, but Amazon EKS users are responsible for managing SSL/TLS certificates, especially for services like ingress controllers and API gateways. Without properly managed certificates, applications and containerized environments are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks and other security risks.

This aligns with AWS’s shared responsibility model. AWS secures the infrastructure, while customers must secure their workloads, applications, and data. To maintain trusted communication and robust application security, SSL/TLS certificates are necessary.

Challenges of TLS Certificate Management in Kubernetes

Managing certificates in Kubernetes environments presents several challenges due to the dynamic nature of container orchestration. There are multiple TLS termination points in Kubernetes where the TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol is applied to encrypt or decrypt traffic, including:

• Load Balancers
• Ingress Controllers
• Pods
• Mutual TLS (mTLS) between Pods

Each of these approaches addresses different security needs, ranging from offloading processing to achieving full end-to-end encryption. However, these varied termination points introduce complexity:

• Expanded Attack Surface: More termination points mean a larger attack surface, requiring careful management
• High Certificate Volume: Kubernetes clusters often require a high volume of certificates, leading to increased management overhead
• Frequent Renewals: The PKI industry’s trend towards shorter TLS validity – such as Google’s 90-Day and Apple’s 45-day TLS validity proposals- complicates manual certificate management significantly, increasing the risk of errors, misconfigurations, outages, and vulnerabilities.

Risks of Mismanaged and Unapproved Certificates

DevOps and application teams will often use unapproved self-signed or wildcard certificates to meet speed and scalability objectives, but this practice carries significant risks:

• Self-signed certificates are difficult to trust, requiring complex management across clusters
• Wildcard certificates, while easier to scale, pose a major risk—if compromised, all subdomains are exposed

Studies show that 60% of security incidents in Kubernetes environments involve misconfigurations, highlighting the need for accurate and authorized certificate provisioning in order to minimize errors and security vulnerabilities. Lack of automated and policy-driven certificate operations in Kubernetes can lead to serious misconfigurations, security vulnerabilities and breaches, underscoring the need for effective and automated certificate management in Kubernetes environments.

Introducing AppViewX AVX ONE CLM for Kubernetes: Simplify CLM and Harden Kubernetes Security

AppViewX AVX ONE CLM for Kubernetes is now available as an EKS add-on, offering a seamless solution for SSL/TLS certificate lifecycle management in Amazon EKS. This add-on provides:

• Complete Certificate Lifecycle Automation: Automate discovery, issuance, renewal, and compliance of certificates
• Integration with AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) and Enterprise CAs: Built-in integrations with ACM and leading public/private CAs ensures seamless compliance, security, and certificate management
• Centralized Self-Service Console: Bridge the gap between DevOps and InfoSec with intuitive self-service capabilities, streamlined automation workflows and strict enterprise-wide PKI policies

With AVX ONE CLM for Kubernetes, AWS users can automate certificate management in Kubernetes, reducing manual errors, minimizing the risk of misconfiguration, and strengthening overall security posture. By providing comprehensive certificate visibility, automation, and control across Amazon EKS, AVX ONE CLM for Kubernetes boosts both security and operational efficiency.

Now Available on AWS Marketplace and as an Amazon EKS Add-on

AWS users can access the AVX ONE CLM for Kubernetes as a SaaS solution from the AWS Marketplace, as well as the AVX ONE CLM for Kubernetes EKS add-on. This makes it easier than ever to adopt a centralized, automated solution for managing SSL/TLS certificates, ensuring that your Kubernetes workloads remain secure and compliant.

Ready to Secure Your Kubernetes Environment

Don’t let manual certificate management in Kubernetes slow down your DevOps workflows or expose your cluster to unnecessary risks. AVX ONE CLM for Kubernetes allows you to simplify and secure your Kubernetes environment, bringing together agility, security, and compliance.

Sign up for AVX ONE CLM for Kubernetes today through AWS Marketplace and take control of your certificate management with confidence. Secure your Kubernetes workloads effortlessly and ensure secure and uninterrupted service delivery.

For more information on streamlining Kubernetes Certificate Management with Amazon EKS and AVX ONE, check out this blog post.