In part one of this series on Kubernetes RBAC, we introduced authentication and authorization methods. In this article, we’ll dive a little deeper into authentication — a prerequisite for RBAC. As we saw, there are a few authentication methods including client certificates, bearer tokens, HTTP basic auth, auth proxy, and impersonation. Because HTTP basic auth and statically configured bearer tokens are considered insecure, we won’t cover them here.

When SUSE, the world’s largest independent open source company, announced its acquisition of Rancher Labs in early July 2020, the industry took notice. Clearly, the Kubernetes management industry is very much alive. But, the merger also raised the question of what this means for users? After all, a key value proposition of cloud native technologies, like SUSE, is that they are modular, interoperable, and flexible.

Cloud native and open source technologies have modernized how we develop software, and although they have led to unprecedented developer productivity and flexibility, they were not built with enterprise needs in mind. A primary challenge is bridging the gap between cloud native and enterprise reality. Enterprises need a centralized Kubernetes management control plane with logging and monitoring that supports security and governance requirements extended through essential Kubernetes frameworks.