Verisign: Security Assurance of Critical, Internet-Scale, On-Premises Kubernetes Platform

About Verisign

Verisign is an American company based in Reston, Virginia, and listed in the S&P 500 stock market index. Verisign manages 2 of the world's 13 Internet DNS root servers, operating the .com and .net domain registries, and handling the backend operations that allow websites with these extensions to function.

Verisign ensures the proper functioning, security, and stability of these Top-Level Domains, playing a crucial role in the secure and uninterrupted operation of the Internet for billions of daily users.

Security Assurance of On-Premises Kubernetes Platform

Housing an on-premises Kubernetes platform consisting of several clusters to host a wide range of workloads, from internal and external business operations to customer services, Verisign faced the critical challenge of safeguarding internet-scale infrastructure and hosted applications. To achieve this goal, the organisation implemented stringent controls across clusters and sought a third-party review to ensure the robustness of their implementation.

Facing the intricate challenges of securing a diverse array of workloads across their Kubernetes environment, Verisign sought ControlPlane's expert guidance to help them assess the security posture of the Kubernetes platform, highlighting any potential weaknesses and identifying areas for improvement.

Challenges

Verisign faced the primary challenge of ensuring the security of their infrastructure and of the workloads hosted on it, and struggled with embedding cloud-native incident response in traditional security operations, with the end goal that the Kubernetes platform would support threat detection, response, and recovery capabilities with the same effectiveness as the other IT systems within the organisation.

Failure to address these challenges could lead to potential vulnerabilities, compromised security, and operational inefficiencies. In particular, the diverse nature of workloads across clusters heightened the potential for vulnerabilities, necessitating a more robust security framework. Moreover, decentralised security tools among different teams hindered a unified view, creating operational complexities and impeding centralised response capabilities. Finally, the absence of a comprehensive incident response strategy tailored to the Kubernetes infrastructure heightened the exposure to potential threats, demanding a more structured and responsive approach.

Solutions

ControlPlane's approach commenced with immersive threat modelling workshops, analysing high-priority threat scenarios based on the set of the threat actors that were deemed appropriate for Verisign's public exposure. Through meticulous assessment and prioritisation, ControlPlane devised and suggested tailored security controls that would augment the security posture of the Kubernetes platform, without introducing additional risks.

The key elements of ControlPlane solution framework were:

• Comprehensive analysis of potential threats to the Kubernetes platform, focused on compromised workloads, nodes, and potential external and insider threats, and supported by attack trees to highlight critical attack paths
• Assessment of existing security controls to validate the current security posture
• Clear guidance on implementing additional security measures for reducing the attack surface
• Strategy for Kubernetes-native incident response through purple teaming exercises, specifically targeting workload and node-related security events and Kubernetes-native response capabilities.

These solutions provided multiple benefits to the client, including:

• Fortifying existing security protocols and implementing additional controls following defence-in-depth and automated security testing
• Facilitating the seamless onboarding of the security operations team, fostering a collaborative approach
• Defining incident response strategies targeting Kubernetes workloads and nodes as the most likely place of initial compromise, enhancing the client's ability to respond effectively to security events in the cloud-native space

Business Outcomes

With ControlPlane's tailored recommendations, Verisign improved the security posture of their Kubernetes platform against misconfigurations and malicious activities, with an integrated approach to cloud-native threat detection and incident response.

ControlPlane's expertise in threat modelling and their collaborative efforts with Verisign demonstrated their dedication to driving innovation and delivering secure solutions in the cloud-native ecosystem.