Today’s organizations use the Kubernetes platform to modernize their applications, making them more adaptable and scalable. Promoting containerization and microservices architectures, Kubernetes enables consistent application behavior and performance across various environments and helps streamline cloud migration. Last year, over 20% of surveyed professional software developers reported extensive use of Kubernetes.1
Typically, during large organizational application modernization initiatives, each line of business (LoB) stands up a host of their own services, develops new applications, and migrates existing applications to the cloud. While Kubernetes is a powerful and versatile platform to progress these application modernization initiatives, its extensive use by various LoB teams can raise challenges for SecOps teams. These challenges may include an increased attack surface, ephemeral containers, limited visibility, distributed workloads, and rapid deployments.
Organizations must provide each LoB with flexibility in protecting their newly built and migrated applications to ensure that application modernization is an effective and efficient endeavor. Together, Google Cloud and F5 can equip organizations with frictionless security to confidently develop and operate adaptive, modern applications. Read on to learn how.
Centrally setting policies
Now open source, Kubernetes was built by Google Cloud. Google continues to set the gold standard with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)—making Google Cloud an ideal infrastructure for organizations to develop and run modern Kubernetes apps. While Google Cloud naturally provides robust security capabilities for Kubernetes, organizations can better ensure secure Kubernetes application development and operations if SecOps teams centrally set and manage security policies.
“Google Cloud and F5 can equip organizations with frictionless security to confidently develop and operate adaptive, modern applications.”
SecOps teams can use F5 BIG-IP app delivery and security services to dedicate and enforce security policies for all Kubernetes applications across every LoB around traffic and load balancing, web application firewalls, identity and access management, APIs, and more. An easily consumable, centralized repository of security policies from BIG-IP helps integrate security early into the application development lifecycle; improves developer, security, and operations team efficiencies; and speeds up time to market. Together, Google Cloud and F5 can erect security guardrails for development, enabling a secure Kubernetes application experience from inception to production.
Seamlessly inheriting protections
GKE automates many of the operational tasks of container management to help Kubernetes applications efficiently run in the cloud and scale for modern performance demands. To further encourage automation, SecOps teams can seamlessly connect GKE to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) to ensure that their security best practices are inherited by Kubernetes applications when LoBs migrate them to the cloud.
BIG-IP VE streamlines secure application modernization by automatically outfitting Kubernetes applications in the cloud with security best practices such as OWASP Top 10 application vulnerability mitigations and defenses against automated attack tactics. BIG-IP VE enables LoB developer teams to keep the familiar SecOps team-approved protection protocols they trust and helps to scale security capabilities to match the speed of application migration.
Prioritize security in Kubernetes modernization
As Kubernetes increasingly becomes a cornerstone of application development and modernization, the F5 and Google Cloud alliance facilitates secure, efficient, and scalable transformation. By centralizing security policies and ensuring seamless protection inheritance, teams become equipped to overcome the unique challenges posed by modern cloud environments. This strategic approach fortifies applications against evolving threats and empowers a secure digital future.
To learn more about how F5 and Google Cloud can help secure your Kubernetes and other applications as you modernize, visit f5.com/gcp.
Source
1. Stack Overflow, 2023 Developer Survey, June 2023
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