Cloud Admission Controller

Cloud Admission Controller

What is an Admission Controller

In Kubernetes, an admission controller is a key component that intercepts requests to the Kubernetes API server, validating or mutating resource configurations before they are persisted in the cluster. Admission controllers are designed to enforce policies, ensuring that any new or modified resources—such as pods, services, or deployments—meet certain compliance and security standards.

For example, an admission controller can prevent a deployment if it doesn’t adhere to specified security policies, such as disallowing images with certain vulnerabilities or ensuring that all containers are running with minimal privileges. By catching non-compliant configurations at this stage, admission controllers protect the system from risky or unintended changes, adding an essential layer of governance.

What an Admission Controller Means for the Cloud

While admission controllers are standard in Kubernetes, there has traditionally been no equivalent for cloud environments. In the cloud, resources are often provisioned dynamically and across multiple providers, making it challenging to enforce consistent governance and prevent misconfigurations before they impact the environment.

Introducing an admission controller-like functionality to the cloud - like Nirmata’s Cloud Control Point, brings the same level of preventive governance to cloud resources. This means that every new resource created in a cloud environment can be evaluated against policies in real-time, whether it’s a virtual machine, a database instance, or a storage bucket. This capability helps prevent misconfigurations and ensures cloud resources are provisioned securely, adhering to organizational policies and compliance requirements.

Benefits of Cloud Admission Controller

Implementing an admission controller for the cloud offers several significant benefits:

  • Proactive Prevention of Misconfigurations: By intercepting and evaluating resources before they are fully created or modified, an admission controller prevents misconfigurations from reaching production. This is critical for avoiding security vulnerabilities, compliance violations, and unintended costs.

  • Consistent Governance Across Cloud Environments: With an admission controller in place, policies are consistently enforced across multiple cloud providers and services. This ensures that governance standards are met regardless of where resources are hosted.

  • Increased Operational Efficiency and Reduced Risk: An admission controller reduces the need for reactive fixes or costly rollbacks, catching issues early and minimizing the risk of human error.

Example Use Case

Imagine an organization that has a policy requiring all cloud storage buckets to be encrypted. Without an admission controller, a team member could accidentally create an unencrypted bucket, which might go unnoticed and expose sensitive data. With Cloud Control Point acting as an admission controller, any new storage bucket is evaluated against this policy, and if encryption is missing, the bucket creation is blocked. This preventive control ensures that only compliant configurations are allowed, greatly reducing security risks.