Cis Oke V150 4.4.2

---
name: cis-oke-v150-4.4.2
description: "Consider external secret storage (Manual)"
category: cis-oke
version: "1.5.0"
author: cyberstrike-official
tags: [cis, oke, kubernetes, oci, policies, secrets-management]
cis_id: "4.4.2"
cis_benchmark: "CIS Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE) Benchmark v1.5.0"
tech_stack: [kubernetes, oci, oke]
cwe_ids: []
chains_with: []
prerequisites: []
severity_boost: {}
---

# 4.4.2 Consider external secret storage (Manual)

## Profile Applicability

- Level 1

## Description

Consider the use of an external secrets storage and management system, instead of using Kubernetes Secrets directly, if you have more complex secret management needs. Ensure the solution requires authentication to access secrets, has auditing of access to and use of secrets, and encrypts secrets. Some solutions also make it easier to rotate secrets.

## Rationale

Kubernetes supports secrets as first-class objects, but care needs to be taken to ensure that access to secrets is carefully limited. Using an external secrets provider can ease the management of access to secrets, especially where secrets are used across both Kubernetes and non-Kubernetes environments.

## Impact

None

## Audit Procedure

Review your secrets management implementation.

## Remediation

Refer to the secrets management options offered by your cloud provider or a third-party secrets management solution.

The master nodes in a Kubernetes cluster store sensitive configuration data (such as authentication tokens, passwords, and SSH keys) as Kubernetes secret objects in etcd. Etcd is an open source distributed key-value store that Kubernetes uses for cluster coordination and state management. In the Kubernetes clusters created by Container Engine for Kubernetes, etcd writes and reads data to and from block storage volumes in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Block Volume service. Although the data in block storage volumes is encrypted, Kubernetes secrets at rest in etcd itself are not encrypted by default.

For additional security, when you create a new cluster you can specify that Kubernetes secrets at rest in etcd are to be encrypted using the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Vault service.

## Default Value

By default, no external secret management is configured.

## References

1. [https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/ContEng/Concepts/contengoverview.htm](https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/ContEng/Concepts/contengoverview.htm)

## CIS Controls

| Controls Version | Control                                                   | IG 1 | IG 2 | IG 3 |
| ---------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- | ---- | ---- | ---- |
| v8               | 4.1 Establish and Maintain a Secure Configuration Process | X    | X    | X    |
| v7               | 14.8 Encrypt Sensitive Information at Rest                |      |      | X    |

## MITRE ATT&CK Mappings

| Techniques / Sub-techniques | Tactics | Mitigations |
| --------------------------- | ------- | ----------- |
| T1552                       | TA0006  | M1026       |

---

**Profile:** Level 1