Zero Trust Microservices: Implementing SPIFFE/SPIRE & mTLS for Kubernetes Services
· 3 min read
In modern cloud-native Kubernetes environments, relying on perimeter firewalls, network security groups, or hardcoded API keys for microservice-to-microservice authentication is no longer sufficient. If an attacker compromises a single pod inside a VPC, unauthenticated internal networks allow lateral movement across the entire cluster.
Zero Trust Architecture (NIST SP 800-207) dictates a fundamental shift: Never Trust, Always Verify. In this article, we explore how to establish cryptographic workload identity using SPIFFE/SPIRE and enforce Mutual TLS (mTLS) via Envoy sidecar proxies.