How to Achieve CIS Compliance for Azure AKS

  1. Compliance
  2. How to Achieve CIS Compliance for Azure AKS

How to Achieve CIS Compliance for Azure AKS

CIS compliance is crucial for establishing strong security controls and safeguarding your cloud infrastructure against cyber threats. Pulumi can help you identify existing cloud resources that are not in compliance, and it can also enforce compliance policies proactively before infrastructure is deployed. Get started with Pulumi to use these compliance tools or speak with a Solutions Architect to get an expert consultation.

What is CIS Compliance?

CIS (Center for Internet Security) Compliance refers to the adherence to security best practices outlined by the CIS, a nonprofit organization that develops globally recognized security standards. These best practices are known as CIS Controls and CIS Benchmarks, which provide guidelines for securing various technologies and systems, including operating systems, cloud services, network devices, and software.

Key Aspects of CIS Compliance

  • Implementation of Controls: Start by implementing the CIS Controls relevant to your organization's size and risk profile.
  • Use CIS Benchmarks: Configure your systems and applications according to CIS Benchmarks.
  • Regular Audits: Continuously monitor and audit your systems to ensure ongoing compliance with CIS recommendations.
  • Automation Tools: Consider using CIS-CAT (CIS Configuration Assessment Tool) or other automation tools to assess and enforce compliance across your infrastructure.

Benefits of CIS Compliance

  • Standardized Security: Ensures that your organization follows industry-recognized security best practices.
  • Risk Reduction: Helps in reducing the attack surface by implementing critical security controls.
  • Compliance with Other Standards: CIS Controls and Benchmarks often overlap with other compliance frameworks like PCI-DSS, NIST, and ISO, making it easier to achieve multiple compliance goals simultaneously.
  • Improved Incident Response: By implementing CIS Controls, organizations are better equipped to detect, respond to, and recover from security incidents.

Pulumi Insights

Use Pulumi Insights to gain visibility into your cloud infrastructure's configuration to assess CIS compliance. Pulumi Insights is Intelligent Cloud Management. It helps you gain security, compliance, and cost insights into the entirety of your organization's cloud assets and automatically remediate issues.

Pulumi Copilot

Use Pulumi Copilot to assist configuring your infrastructure to make it compliance ready. You can tap into the Pulumi Copilot's deep understanding of your organization's context to gain visibility into the configuration of resources and assess their compliance.

Compliance Ready Policies

With comprehensive coverage of Azure, Pulumi Compliance Ready Policies provide an enhanced level of control and governance over your cloud resources. Pulumi Compliance Ready Policies empower you to enforce best practices, security standards, cost controls, and compliance requirements seamlessly within your infrastructure-as-code workflows.

What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a fully managed Kubernetes service that simplifies the deployment, scaling, and operation of containerized applications using Kubernetes. It automates tasks like patching, scaling, and node provisioning, allowing developers to focus on application development rather than managing Kubernetes infrastructure. AKS offers seamless integration with Azure services for secure, efficient, and scalable container management.

What controls can I put in place to evaluate Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) resources?

  • AKS cluster endpoints should not be publicly accessible
  • AKS clusters should run on a supported Kubernetes version
  • AKS clusters should use encrypted Kubernetes secrets
  • AKS clusters should be tagged
  • AKS identity provider configurations should be tagged
  • AKS clusters should have audit logging enabled

Speak to a Solutions Architect to implement policy as code to manage AKS resources for CIS compliance.

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