Cyber Security

The core zero-trust principle is: "Never Trust, Always Verify.", so even after authentication and authorization, keep continuous monitoring and verifying.

 At this level, you consider the implementation of "Least Privileges".

To implement this principle, we should apply the following practices:

1. Integrate SAST tools at the pipeline, like SonarCloud

2. Automated Security Testing  (OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite )

3. WAF as the umbrella for your solution, which detects the following:

• XSS

• Rate limiting

• Anomaly detection

• Injections

• Block malicious payloads

4. Strong Authentication (OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWT) 

5. MFA: Multi-factor authentication, authentication at first login

6. Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to prevent access to improper services

7. Encrypt payload

8. Use secret keys

9. Auto-Rotate secret keys

10. Use a secret key for each channel

11. Never expose the secret key in the front-end layer

12. Obfuscation of frontend

13. Add HSTS and XSS headers at the frontend

14. Add HSTS and XSS headers at the backend

15. Continuous authentication on core activities:

• Payment

• Asset transfer

16. Encrypt traffic

• SSL

• TLS 1.2 or higher

17. Prevent data crawling

18. Infrastructure security

19. API versioning deprecation model for old APIs

20. Users/systems get only the access they need

21. Developer can’t access production DB

22. NIST 800-53 (AC-6), CIS Controls v8

23. Firewall Matrixes

24. RBAC with API control limitations

In CNCF, Security by Design means building security controls into cloud-native systems from the start, rather than adding them later.

Key principles in the CNCF context:

• Default secure configurations (e.g., minimal privileges, encrypted communications).

• Shift-left security — integrating security checks into CI/CD pipelines early in development.

• Isolation & sandboxing — using containers, namespaces, and network policies to limit blast radius.

• Supply chain security — verifying container images, dependencies, and build pipelines (e.g., with Notary, Sigstore).

• Runtime protection — monitoring for anomalies with tools like Falco.

• Policy enforcement — applying rules automatically via OPA, Kyverno.

• Secure service identity — using SPIFFE/SPIRE for workload authentication.

• Enable CORS restrictions

• Configure and implement CSRF tokens 

Yes — CNCF’s Security by Design overlaps a lot with Zero Trust, but they’re not identical.

Similarities:

• Never trust by default – every connection, workload, and user is verified.

• Least privilege – minimal permissions for services and users.

• Continuous verification – authentication/authorization at each request.

• Micro-segmentation – limit lateral movement via network policies.

Differences:

• Security by Design in CNCF is broader: covers secure coding, supply chain security, secure defaults, and runtime protections — not just access control.
  
  

• Zero Trust is mainly a security model for identity, access, and network trust boundaries — often a subset of Security by Design.
  
  

So in practice:

• Zero Trust = one core principle set inside CNCF’s larger Security by Design approach.
  
  

• CNCF would use Zero Trust patterns plus other security practices across the whole development and operations lifecycle.

So, you should consider the following:

• • Integrate security from the start of the development lifecycle

  • Threat modeling in app design phase

  • OWASP SAMM, Secure SDLC

  • Secure every layer by concrete hardening process

1. Identify Critical Components

• Map out which parts are mission-critical & their dependencies.

• Use dependency diagrams / service maps.

2. Define SLAs & SLOs

• Set expectations for what “acceptable degradation” looks like.

• E.g., 95% requests succeed even if one DB node is down.

3. Design for Redundancy

• Use replication, clusters, multi-AZ/multi-region deployments.

• DB replicas, stateless services, load balancers.

4. Implement Graceful Degradation

• Let the system operate with limited functionality.

• Disable non-critical features when under strain.

5. Use Timeouts & Circuit Breakers

• Detect & isolate failing components to protect the rest.

• Hystrix, Resilience4j, Envoy circuit breakers.

6. Monitor & Detect Quickly

• Add health checks, distributed tracing, alerts.

• Prometheus, ELK, Datadog, OpenTelemetry.

7. Test Partial Failures

• Chaos testing to simulate component failures & validate resilience.

• Use Chaos Monkey, LitmusChaos, Gremlin.

8. Communicate Status

• Show clear status/errors to users & fallback options.

• “Read-only mode” or retry options.

9. Plan Recovery & Rollback

• Automate failover & recovery processes.

• Auto-healing with Kubernetes, disaster recovery drills.

• Plan for high availability: HPA

A security management approach is the structured method an organization uses to plan, implement, monitor, and continuously improve how it protects information, systems, and operations from threats. 

Will mention approach, Description, example, and related Best Practices / Standards, as following:

• Risk-Based Approach

  1. Focus on threats with the highest business impact

  2. Prioritize patching exposed servers over internal apps

  3. ISO 27005, NIST RMF

• Segmentation

  1. Divide systems/networks to limit breach impact

  2. Separate the finance network from the guest Wi-Fi

  3. PCI DSS, NIST CSF

• Monitoring & Detection

  1. Continuous logging and anomaly detection

  2. SIEM alerts for failed logins or unusual traffic

  3. MITRE ATT&CK, NIST 800-92

• Patch Management

  1. Timely updating of software and systems

  2. Monthly OS/app updates, CVE patching

  3. NIST 800-40, CIS Control 7

• Awareness & Training

  1. Educating users to recognize threats

  2. Phishing simulation and response training

  3. ISO 27001 A.7, NIST NICE Framework

• Incident Response

  1. Defined process to detect, respond, and recover from incidents

  2. IR plan triggered during ransomware attack

  3. NIST 800-61, ISO 27035

Common Frameworks for a Security Management Approach:

• ISO/IEC 27001 – ISMS (Information Security Management System).
  
  

• NIST Cybersecurity Framework – Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, Recover.
  
  

• COBIT – Governance of enterprise IT security.