Implementing Kubernetes Pod Security Standards

Overview

Pod Security Standards (PSS) define three levels of security policies -- Privileged, Baseline, and Restricted -- enforced by the Pod Security Admission (PSA) controller built into Kubernetes 1.25+. PSA replaces the deprecated PodSecurityPolicy and provides namespace-level enforcement with three modes: enforce, audit, and warn.

When to Use

• Deciding whether a namespace or workload belongs at Privileged, Baseline, or Restricted
• Auditing which existing workloads would be rejected if Restricted were enforced today
• Translating a "must meet Restricted" requirement into concrete securityContext changes
• Planning a PodSecurityPolicy migration and predicting what will break before it does
• Mapping pod security posture to a compliance control (NIST PR.PS-01, CIS Kubernetes)

Not this skill: configuring the controller that enforces these profiles — namespace labels, AdmissionConfiguration, exemptions, or debugging a pod PSA rejected. Use implementing-pod-security-admission-controller.

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes cluster 1.25+ (PSA GA)
• kubectl configured with cluster-admin access
• Understanding of Linux capabilities and security contexts

Core Concepts

Three Security Profiles

Profile	Purpose	Restrictions
Privileged	Unrestricted, system workloads	None
Baseline	Prevents known escalations	No hostNetwork, hostPID, hostIPC, privileged containers, dangerous capabilities
Restricted	Hardened best practices	Non-root, drop ALL caps, seccomp required, read-only rootfs recommended

Three Enforcement Modes

Mode	Behavior
enforce	Rejects pods that violate the policy
audit	Logs violations in audit log but allows pod
warn	Returns warning to user but allows pod

Workflow

Step 1: Label Namespaces for PSA

# Restricted namespace - production workloads
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: production
  labels:
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce: restricted
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce-version: latest
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/audit: restricted
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/audit-version: latest
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/warn: restricted
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/warn-version: latest

# Baseline namespace - general workloads
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: staging
  labels:
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce: baseline
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce-version: latest
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/audit: restricted
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/audit-version: latest
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/warn: restricted
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/warn-version: latest

# Privileged namespace - system components only
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: kube-system
  labels:
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce: privileged
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce-version: latest

Step 2: Apply Labels to Existing Namespaces

# Apply restricted enforcement to production
kubectl label namespace production \
  pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce=restricted \
  pod-security.kubernetes.io/audit=restricted \
  pod-security.kubernetes.io/warn=restricted \
  --overwrite

# Apply baseline to staging with restricted warnings
kubectl label namespace staging \
  pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce=baseline \
  pod-security.kubernetes.io/audit=restricted \
  pod-security.kubernetes.io/warn=restricted \
  --overwrite

# Check labels on all namespaces
kubectl get namespaces -L pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce

Step 3: Create Compliant Pod Specs

# Restricted-compliant deployment
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: secure-app
  namespace: production
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: secure-app
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: secure-app
    spec:
      automountServiceAccountToken: false
      securityContext:
        runAsNonRoot: true
        runAsUser: 65534
        runAsGroup: 65534
        fsGroup: 65534
        seccompProfile:
          type: RuntimeDefault
      containers:
        - name: app
          image: myregistry.com/myapp:v1.0.0@sha256:abc123
          ports:
            - containerPort: 8080
              protocol: TCP
          securityContext:
            allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
            readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
            capabilities:
              drop:
                - ALL
            runAsNonRoot: true
            runAsUser: 65534
          resources:
            requests:
              memory: "64Mi"
              cpu: "100m"
            limits:
              memory: "256Mi"
              cpu: "500m"
          volumeMounts:
            - name: tmp
              mountPath: /tmp
            - name: cache
              mountPath: /var/cache
      volumes:
        - name: tmp
          emptyDir:
            sizeLimit: 100Mi
        - name: cache
          emptyDir:
            sizeLimit: 50Mi

Step 4: Gradual Migration Strategy

# Phase 1: Audit mode - discover violations without blocking
kubectl label namespace my-namespace \
  pod-security.kubernetes.io/audit=restricted \
  pod-security.kubernetes.io/warn=restricted

# Check audit logs for violations
kubectl logs -n kube-system -l component=kube-apiserver | grep "pod-security"

# Phase 2: Enforce baseline, warn on restricted
kubectl label namespace my-namespace \
  pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce=baseline \
  pod-security.kubernetes.io/warn=restricted \
  --overwrite

# Phase 3: Full restricted enforcement
kubectl label namespace my-namespace \
  pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce=restricted \
  --overwrite

Step 5: Dry-Run Enforcement Testing

# Test what would happen with restricted enforcement
kubectl label --dry-run=server --overwrite namespace my-namespace \
  pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce=restricted

# Example output:
# Warning: existing pods in namespace "my-namespace" violate the new
# PodSecurity enforce level "restricted:latest"
# Warning: nginx-xxx: allowPrivilegeEscalation != false,
#   unrestricted capabilities, runAsNonRoot != true, seccompProfile

Baseline Profile Restrictions

Control	Restricted	Requirement
HostProcess	Must not set	Pods cannot use Windows HostProcess
Host Namespaces	Must not set	No hostNetwork, hostPID, hostIPC
Privileged	Must not set	No privileged: true
Capabilities	Baseline list only	Only NET_BIND_SERVICE, drop ALL for restricted
HostPath Volumes	Must not use	No hostPath volume mounts
Host Ports	Must not use	No hostPort in container spec
AppArmor	Default/runtime	Cannot set to unconfined
SELinux	Limited types	Only container_t, container_init_t, container_kvm_t
/proc Mount Type	Default only	Must use Default proc mount
Seccomp	RuntimeDefault or Localhost	Must specify seccomp profile (restricted)
Sysctls	Safe set only	Limited to safe sysctls

Validation Commands

# Verify namespace labels
kubectl get ns --show-labels | grep pod-security

# Test pod creation against policy
kubectl run test-pod --image=nginx --namespace=production --dry-run=server

# Check for violations in audit logs
kubectl get events --field-selector reason=FailedCreate -A

# Scan with Kubescape for PSS compliance
kubescape scan framework nsa --namespace production

References

• Pod Security Standards - Kubernetes
• Pod Security Admission - Kubernetes
• Migrate from PodSecurityPolicy
• Kubescape PSS Scanner