Security and Hardening of Kubernetes in Public Clouds: A Comparative Study of EKS, AKS, and GKE
Andrzej Mycek, Maryna Lukaczyk · IEEE Access · 2026
Kubernetes has become the foundation and a critical tool of modern cloud infrastructure; however, its complex architecture brings significant security challenges. This study presents a comparative analysis of the three most popular managed Kubernetes services—Amazon EKS, Azure AKS, and Google GKE—focusing on their security architecture, hardening mechanisms, and compliance with the CIS Kubernetes Benchmark. The work combines theoretical assessment with empirical testing using the kube-bench tool on clusters deployed in each cloud. The analysis covers authentication, authorization, data encryption, auditing, and real-time protection. The results indicate that all platforms offer a comparable level of security, providing end users with advanced security features. The study also considers recent vulnerabilities, such as IngressNightmare, demonstrating how their presence impacts production environments’ security and highlighting the critical importance of Kubernetes hardening. The findings provide practical guidance for DevSecOps teams and infrastructure architects in selecting, hardening, and securingKubernetes deployments according to organizational priorities.