Keeping Kubernetes Safe in Healthcare: A Practical Guide
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63282/3050-9262.IJAIDSML-V3I1P104Keywords:
Kubernetes, Healthcare Security, HIPAA, GDPR, Kubernetes Security, Container Orchestration, Patient Data Security, Healthcare Compliance, DevSecOps, Microservices Security, Kubernetes Monitoring, Healthcare Cloud Security, Kubernetes Best Practices, Cluster Hardening, Security in Healthcare ITAbstract
Kubernetes has become a cornerstone of modern healthcare IT infrastructure, offering immense scalability, flexibility, and efficiency. However, the sensitive nature of healthcare data and the regulatory environment present unique security challenges when deploying and managing Kubernetes clusters. This guide aims to provide healthcare IT professionals with practical insights on safeguarding Kubernetes environments while maintaining compliance with healthcare regulations such as HIPAA. It covers best practices for securing clusters, including role-based access control (RBAC), network policies, and secrets management, to ensure that sensitive patient data remains protected. The guide also highlights the importance of monitoring and logging to detect and respond to security incidents in real time. Additionally, it addresses common vulnerabilities in Kubernetes configurations and offers strategies to mitigate these risks, such as hardening the Kubernetes API server and controlling access to nodes and pods. Special attention is given to DevSecOps practices that embed security into the development and deployment pipelines, ensuring continuous security at every stage of the software lifecycle. By following the recommendations outlined in this guide, healthcare organizations can confidently adopt Kubernetes to drive innovation while maintaining the highest standards of data security and compliance. This practical approach not only improves the security posture of healthcare systems but also enables them to scale securely as they continue to evolve in a rapidly changing digital landscape
References
[1] Burns, B., & Tracey, C. (2018). Managing Kubernetes: operating Kubernetes clusters in the real world. O'Reilly Media.
[2] Surovich, S., & Boorshtein, M. (2020). Kubernetes and Docker-An Enterprise Guide: Effectively containerize applications, integrate enterprise systems, and scale applications in your enterprise. Packt Publishing Ltd.
[3] Luksa, M. (2017). Kubernetes in action. Simon and Schuster.
[4] Baptista, T., Silva, L. B., & Costa, C. (2021, December). Highly scalable medical imaging repository based on Kubernetes. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM) (pp. 3193-3200). IEEE.
[5] Arundel, J., & Domingus, J. (2019). Cloud Native DevOps with Kubernetes: building, deploying, and scaling modern applications in the Cloud. O'Reilly Media.
[6] Farcic, V. (2018). The DevOps 2.3 Toolkit: Kubernetes: Deploying and managing highly-available and fault-tolerant applications at scale. Packt Publishing Ltd.
[7] Krochmalski, J. (2017). Docker and Kubernetes for Java Developers. Packt Publishing Ltd.
[8] Javed, A. (2016). Container-based IoT sensor node on raspberry Pi and the Kubernetes cluster framework (Master's thesis).
[9] Moran, M. E., & Moran, M. E. (2014). Towards Keeping the Hippocratic Oath (Six Sigma). Urolithiasis: A Comprehensive History, 437-453.
[10] Verma, A., Pedrosa, L., Korupolu, M., Oppenheimer, D., Tune, E., & Wilkes, J. (2015, April). Large-scale cluster management at Google with Borg. In Proceedings of the tenth european conference on computer systems (pp. 1-17).
[11] Mathias, W. L. (2009). The shaping of decision-making in governance in the New Zealand public healthcare services (Doctoral dissertation, Auckland University of Technology).
[12] Aslam, M. S. (2012). The impact of pharmacybernetic in reducing medication error. arXiv preprint arXiv:1205.1649.
[13] Yap, K. Y. L., Chuang, X., Lee, A. J. M., Lee, R. Z., Lim, L., Lim, J. J., & Nimesha, R. (2009). Pharmaco-cybernetics as an interactive component of pharma-culture: empowering drug knowledge through user-, experience-and activity-centered designs. International Journal of Computer Science Issues (IJCSI), 3, 1.
[14] Safety, I. O., Nation’s, P. O., Threats, O. F. B., & Cameras, B. W. (2012). Law Enforcement. Copryright IBM Corporation.
[15] Antonopoulos, N., & Gillam, L. (2010). Cloud computing (Vol. 51, No. 7). London: Springer.
