Secure Your Kubernetes Cluster — A Hands-On Mini Project with RBAC, Secrets & Network Policies

#kubernetes #devops #security #opensource

Kubernetes is powerful — but with great power comes a giant security surface area.

In this hands-on mini project, I walk you through how to secure your Kubernetes cluster using built-in tools and real YAML examples:

✅ Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

✅ Kubernetes Secrets (with proper injection into pods)

✅ Network Policies (to restrict lateral movement)

🧱 What You'll Learn

How to create least-privilege ServiceAccounts with RBAC
How to inject Secrets securely into your pods
How to use Network Policies to lock down internal pod communication
How to test and verify all of the above using kubectl, curl, and auth can-i

📖 Full Guide

📘 Read the complete breakdown with code and context on Medium:

👉 Medium Article

💻 GitHub Project Repository

All manifests and test YAMLs are available on GitHub for you to clone, run, and learn:

👉 GitHub Repo

☕ Why I Built This

Too many Kubernetes environments start secure... and then permissions spiral out of control. Secrets are exposed. Pods talk to everything. And suddenly, your cluster is wide open.

This project aims to make security practical, not theoretical. You don’t need fancy tools or expensive platforms — just the Kubernetes features you already have.