Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Admission controllers are a powerful Kubernetes-native feature that helps you define and customize what is allowed to run on your cluster. As watchdogs, they can control what’s going into your cluster. They can manage deployments requesting too many resources, enforce pod security policies, and even block vulnerable images from being deployed. In this article, you’ll learn what admission controllers are in Kubernetes and how their webhooks can be used to implement image scanning.

Picture the scene. It’s 9am on a cold, wet, January Sunday morning in 2015 and I’m trudging up Merrion Street in Leeds. Recently made redundant, I’m on my way to a coffee shop that I’m desperately hoping is open. Am I a coffee aficionado desperate for a fix? Am I getting pumped for a gym session? Do I just enjoy walks in the rain? No. I’m on my way to a job interview.

The recent news of a cyberattack on a water treatment plant carried out by a remote perpetrator came as a shock to organizations around the world. Earlier this month, an unauthorized threat actor had remotely accessed the plant’s control systems via TeamViewer and used it to increase the amount of sodium hydroxide (lye) in water to dangerously higher levels.

Security is an essential part of any modern IT foundation, whether in smaller shops or at enterprise-scale. It used to be sufficient to implement rules-based software to defend against malicious actors, but those malicious actors are not standing still. Just as every aspect of IT has become more sophisticated, attackers have continued to innovate as well. Building more and more rules-based software to detect security events means you are always one step behind in an unsustainable fight.

We are excited to introduce Calico Cloud, a pay-as-you-go SaaS platform for Kubernetes security and observability. With Calico Cloud, users only pay for services consumed and are billed monthly, getting immediate value without upfront investment.