February 22, 2026
Kubernetes audit logging records every request to the API server: who made the request, what they asked for, and what happened. Without audit logging, you have no visibility into who accessed secrets, who changed RBAC roles, or who exec’d into a production pod. It is the foundation of security monitoring in Kubernetes.
The audit policy defines which events to record and at what detail level. There are four levels:
February 22, 2026
Audit logging records every request to the Kubernetes API server. Every kubectl command, every controller reconciliation, every kubelet heartbeat, every admission webhook call – all of it can be captured with the requester’s identity, the target resource, the timestamp, and optionally the full request and response bodies. Without audit logging, you have no record of who did what in your cluster. With it, you can trace security incidents, satisfy compliance requirements, and debug access control issues.
February 22, 2026
This operational sequence takes a default Kubernetes cluster and locks it down. Phases are ordered by impact and dependency: assessment first, then RBAC, pod security, networking, images, auditing, and finally data protection. Each phase includes the commands, policy YAML, and verification steps.
Do not skip the assessment phase. You need to know what you are fixing before you start fixing it.
Before changing anything, establish a baseline. This phase produces a prioritized list of findings that drives the order of remediation in later phases.