Kubernetes Operator Security

Secure Operator manifests, OLM packaging, CRD governance, and runtime configuration for least-privilege operation.

Design Principles

Minimize Scope

• Restrict cluster-scope and namespace-scope permissions to the minimum required for the Operator to function
• Justify every cluster-scoped permission; move static cluster-scoped resource creation to the OLM catalog when possible
• Use OperatorGroup to specify the set of namespaces the Operator manages

Namespace Isolation

• Deploy the Operator in a separate namespace from its operands
• Never deploy Operators in namespaces shared with non-privileged users
• Ensure non-privileged users cannot read Secrets in the Operator's namespace

Fine-Grained Roles