Kube-Policies

Enterprise-grade Kubernetes policy enforcement system providing comprehensive security guardrails, compliance monitoring, and governance for containerized applications at scale.

🎯 Overview

Kube-Policies is a comprehensive policy enforcement platform designed to address the critical security and compliance challenges faced by enterprise organizations operating in cloud-native environments. Built on the foundation of Block's pioneering implementation, this solution extends and enhances the original concept to create a production-ready, enterprise-grade system.

Key Features

• 🛡️ Real-time Policy Enforcement: Sub-millisecond policy evaluation with OPA-based engine
• 🏢 Enterprise Security: Comprehensive security controls with CIS, NIST, and custom compliance frameworks
• 🔄 Multi-Tenant Architecture: Hierarchical policy inheritance with tenant-specific customizations
• 📊 Advanced Monitoring: Prometheus metrics, Grafana dashboards, and comprehensive audit logging
• ⚡ High Performance: Intelligent caching and horizontal scaling for enterprise workloads
• 🔐 Zero Trust Security: mTLS communication, encryption at rest/transit, and minimal privilege access
• 📋 Exception Management: Structured exception handling with approval workflows
• 🎛️ Policy as Code: GitOps-enabled policy management with version control

🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.20+ (recommended 1.24+)
• Helm 3.8+
• RBAC enabled cluster

Installation

# Add Helm repository
helm repo add kube-policies https://charts.kube-policies.io
helm repo update

# Create namespace
kubectl create namespace kube-policies-system

# Install with monitoring enabled
helm install kube-policies kube-policies/kube-policies \
  --namespace kube-policies-system \
  --set monitoring.enabled=true \
  --set policies.enableDefaults=true

Verify Installation

# Check components
kubectl get pods -n kube-policies-system

# Verify admission webhooks
kubectl get validatingadmissionwebhooks
kubectl get mutatingadmissionwebhooks

# Test policy enforcement
kubectl apply -f examples/policies/security-baseline.yaml

📁 Repository Structure

kube-policies/
├── cmd/                           # Application entry points
│   ├── admission-webhook/         # Admission webhook service
│   └── policy-manager/            # Policy management service
├── internal/                      # Internal application code
│   ├── admission/                 # Admission controller logic
│   ├── config/                    # Configuration management
│   ├── metrics/                   # Metrics collection
│   ├── policy/                    # Policy engine
│   └── policymanager/             # Policy manager implementation
├── pkg/                           # Public packages
│   ├── audit/                     # Audit logging
│   └── logger/                    # Structured logging
├── charts/                        # Helm charts
│   └── kube-policies/             # Main Helm chart
│       ├── templates/             # Kubernetes manifests
│       ├── Chart.yaml             # Chart metadata
│       └── values.yaml            # Default configuration
├── deployments/                   # Deployment manifests
│   └── kubernetes/                # Kubernetes deployments
│       ├── base/                  # Base manifests
│       ├── crds/                  # Custom Resource Definitions
│       └── monitoring/            # Monitoring stack
├── monitoring/                    # Monitoring configurations
│   ├── grafana/                   # Grafana dashboards
│   │   └── dashboards/            # Dashboard definitions
│   ├── prometheus/                # Prometheus configuration
│   └── alertmanager/              # Alertmanager configuration
├── examples/                      # Example configurations
│   ├── policies/                  # Sample policies
│   └── exceptions/                # Sample exceptions
├── build/                         # Build configurations
│   └── docker/                    # Dockerfiles
├── docs/                          # Documentation
├── scripts/                       # Utility scripts
├── DEPLOYMENT.md                  # Deployment guide
├── CONTRIBUTING.md                # Contribution guidelines
└── README.md                      # This file

🏗️ Architecture

System Components

1. Admission Webhook: Validates and mutates Kubernetes resources in real-time
2. Policy Manager: Manages policy lifecycle, exceptions, and compliance reporting
3. Policy Engine: OPA-based evaluation engine with sub-millisecond performance
4. Audit System: Comprehensive audit logging with multiple backend support
5. Monitoring Stack: Prometheus, Grafana, and Alertmanager integration

Core Subsystems

• Policy Engine Subsystem: Real-time admission control with OPA-based evaluation
• Policy Management Subsystem: Comprehensive policy lifecycle management
• Audit & Compliance Subsystem: Tamper-evident audit logging and compliance reporting
• Exception Management Subsystem: Structured exception handling with approval workflows
• Observability Subsystem: Comprehensive monitoring, metrics, and alerting

📊 Monitoring & Observability

Grafana Dashboards

• Overview Dashboard: System health, performance, and policy enforcement metrics
• Security Dashboard: Policy violations, threat detection, and compliance metrics
• Performance Dashboard: Resource usage, latency, and throughput monitoring

Prometheus Metrics

• Policy evaluation latency and throughput
• Admission webhook performance metrics
• Policy violation rates by severity
• System resource utilization
• Compliance framework scores

Alerting Rules

• High latency alerts (>100ms 95th percentile)
• High error rate alerts (>5% error rate)
• Service availability monitoring
• Policy violation rate monitoring
• Resource usage alerts

🔧 Configuration

Basic Policy Example

apiVersion: policies.kube-policies.io/v1
kind: Policy
metadata:
  name: security-baseline
spec:
  description: "Basic security requirements"
  enabled: true
  rules:
    - name: no-privileged-containers
      severity: HIGH
      rego: |
        deny[msg] {
          input.spec.securityContext.privileged
          msg := "Privileged containers are not allowed"
        }

Exception Management

apiVersion: policies.kube-policies.io/v1
kind: PolicyException
metadata:
  name: emergency-deployment
spec:
  policy: security-baseline
  rules: ["no-privileged-containers"]
  duration: "24h"
  justification: "Emergency security patch deployment"
  approval:
    required: true
    approvers: ["security-team"]

🛠️ Development

Building from Source

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/kube-policies/kube-policies.git
cd kube-policies

# Build binaries
make build

# Build Docker images
make docker-build

# Run tests
make test

# Run linting
make lint

Local Development

# Start local development environment
make dev-setup

# Run admission webhook locally
make run-webhook

# Run policy manager locally
make run-policy-manager

📚 Documentation

• Deployment Guide - Comprehensive deployment instructions
• Architecture Documentation - Detailed system architecture
• Policy Development Guide - Creating custom policies
• API Reference - Complete API documentation
• Troubleshooting Guide - Common issues and solutions

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see our Contributing Guide for details on:

• Code of conduct
• Development setup
• Submission process
• Testing requirements
• Documentation standards

Development Workflow

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Make your changes
4. Add tests and documentation
5. Submit a pull request

📄 License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

🆘 Support

• Documentation: https://docs.kube-policies.io
• GitHub Issues: https://github.com/kube-policies/kube-policies/issues
• Community Slack: https://slack.kube-policies.io
• Email Support: [email protected]

🌟 Acknowledgments

• Inspired by Block's Kube-Policies implementation
• Built on Open Policy Agent (OPA)
• Kubernetes community for admission controller patterns
• CNCF projects for cloud-native best practices

🔗 Related Projects

• Open Policy Agent
• Gatekeeper
• Falco
• Polaris

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Kube-Policies - Securing Kubernetes at Enterprise Scale