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Despite being beneficial for rapid delivery of software, Kubernetes deployments can be susceptible to security attacks, which can cause serious consequences. A systematic characterization of how community-prescribed security configurations, i.e., security configurations that are recommended by security experts, can aid practitioners to secure their Kubernetes deployments. To that end, we conduct an empirical study with 53 security configurations recommended by the Center for Internet Security (CIS), 20 survey respondents, and 544 configuration files obtained from the open source software (OSS) and proprietary domains. From our empirical study, we observe: (i) practitioners can be unaware of prescribed security configurations as 5% ~40% of the survey respondents are unfamiliar with 16 prescribed configurations; and (ii) for Company-A and OSS respectively, 18.0% and 17.9% of the configuration files include at least one violation of prescribed configurations. From our evaluation with 5 static application security testing (SAST) tools we find (i) only Kubescape to support all of the prescribed security configuration categories; (ii) the highest observed precision to be 0.41 and 0.43 respectively, for the Company-A and OSS datasets; and (iii) the highest observed recall to be respectively, 0.53 and 0.65 for the Company-A and OSS datasets. Our findings show a disconnect between what CIS experts recommend for Kubernetes-related configurations and what happens in practice. We conclude the paper by providing recommendations for practitioners and researchers. Dataset used for the paper is publicly available online.
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This content will become publicly available on June 23, 2026
Dynamic Application Security Testing for Kubernetes Deployment: An Experience Report from Industry
While Kubernetes enables practitioners to rapidly deploy their software and perform container orchestration efficiently, security of the Kubernetes-based deployment infrastructure is a concern for industry practitioners. A systematic understanding of how dynamic analysis can be used for securing Kubernetes deployments can aid practitioners in securing their Kubernetes deployments. We present an experience report, where we describe empirical findings from three dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools on a Kubernetes deployment used by 'Company-Z'. From our empirical study, we find (i) 3,442 recommended security configurations are violated in 'Company-Z's' Kubernetes deployment; and (ii) of the three studied DAST tools, Kubescape and Kubebench provide the highest support with respect to detecting 14 types of recommended security configurations. Based on our findings, we recommend practitioners to apply DAST tools for their Kubernetes deployments, and security researchers to investigate how to detect configuration violations dynamically in the Kubernetes deployment.
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- PAR ID:
- 10636002
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 9798400712760
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 514 to 519
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Clarion Hotel Trondheim Trondheim Norway
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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