Effectively managing sensitive information such as API keys, passwords, and certificates within a Kubernetes environment and ensuring that this data remains inaccessible to cluster administrators or system operators is a critical requirement for organizations that prioritize strong security and compliance.

To achieve this level of protection, especially in multi-tenant or regulated environments, several robust strategies and tools can be employed to minimize the risk of unauthorized access to secrets.

Following are some of the best practices and methods to secure secrets in Kubernetes, ensuring that they are not visible to administrators or operators:

Karpenter is an open-source Kubernetes node autoscaler developed by AWS. It automatically launches the right compute resources (EC2 instances) when your cluster needs them and shuts them down when they’re no longer needed.

Traditional autoscalers (like the Cluster Autoscaler) work well but can be slow and limited in flexibility. Karpenter is designed to be:

Faster: It reacts quickly to unschedulable pods. Smarter: It chooses the best instance types based on your workload needs. Cost-efficient: It can use spot instances and right-size nodes to save money. Flexible: It doesn’t require pre-defined node groups.