The benefit of Kubernetes is that it makes it possible to manage and deploy modern applications with increased speed and efficiency. Kubernetes enables governments to continue their pursuit of coping with new realities and building a better future for their people. Governments must continue to be innovative and evolve, building new digital ecosystems by enabling DevSecOps in the pursuit of digital transformation.
The heat is on government agencies and the military to continuously innovate and adopt new technologies. This puts Kubernetes adoption right smack in the center of this pressure pot, but unfortunately, new Kubernetes ecosystems come with a number of challenges.
Let’s explore the top three Kubernetes challenges that the public sector is facing in the race to innovate and modernize.
1) Increased Deployment Pressures Increase Cyber Risk
As public sector DevOps teams race against the clock to modernize their applications and microservices using containers, new vulnerabilities increase in conjunction. The digital journey to hybrid and multi-cloud environments and the number of application clusters multiply with the growth of edge computing.
Kubernetes and cloud-native data management are critical to modernizing government technologies in order to increase agility and accelerate application development. Unfortunately, front page headlines reveal more and more Kubernetes security breaches every day, directly correlated to the increase in the number of projects moving into production.
Since modernizing government technologies is top of mind, so is the determination to stay ahead of the curve and minimize risk from the top sources of compromise like supply chain risks, malicious threat actors, and insider threats. Boosting security and compliance to reduce these sources of compromise can be achieved by applying Zero Trust principles of “just-in-time and least privilege,” and using network separation, firewalls, strong authentication, and log auditing.
2) Complexities of Managing Day Two Operations
The road to success is not paved in gold, but the journey can lead to a beautiful transformation. The road to Day Two production operations and Kubernetes success is not an easy one, but the journey will lead to increased speed, agility, and scalability.
Challenges in Day Two are common and complex as operations teams increase the number of nodes and scale applications to keep pace with broader business goals. Applications must meet security, agility, and compliance requirements, so things like monitoring, maintenance, and troubleshooting, must be considered.
Being able to successfully move into Day Two operations also means improving your applications and the way they operate in production. All of which requires a game plan.
3) A New Approach to Networking is Needed
With the promise of more efficient and faster applications, using microservices architecture to respond to critical business needs as organizations scale becomes important. However, networking is a concern when implementing Kubernetes.
Traditional ways of operating networks aren’t going to work anymore, which is one of the challenges when moving legacy applications using the lift and shift strategy. Networking is one of the top challenges faced by Kubernetes users, as indicated in the 2020 CNCF Survey.
Building new Kubernetes ecosystems comes with many challenges, but the benefits of increased speed, agility, and efficiency far outweigh any of these challenges.
In order to stay ahead of the game, it’s vital that organizations continue to adapt and evolve, which includes attending important industry events to spark ideas, innovation, and find new solutions to these technology challenges, which will in turn allow organizations to remain competitive in today’s world.
