GKE Workload Identity

Purpose

Workload Identity enables GKE pods to authenticate to Google Cloud services without managing service account keys. Pods use short-lived, automatically rotated credentials based on IAM bindings between Kubernetes and GCP service accounts.

When to Use

Use this skill when you need to:

• Set up secure authentication from GKE pods to GCP services (Pub/Sub, Cloud SQL, Secret Manager)
• Eliminate service account key management and rotation
• Implement least privilege access with IAM bindings
• Authenticate Spring Boot applications to Google Cloud APIs
• Reduce security blast radius by avoiding static credentials
• Enable Cloud SQL Proxy or Pub/Sub client libraries to authenticate automatically

Trigger phrases: "set up Workload Identity", "GKE authentication", "pod to GCP service auth", "keyless authentication", "Cloud SQL IAM auth"

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