Security Best Practices in Google Cloud: Containers

Stop Security Drift in Containerized Environments

Container environments tend to drift out of shape over time as misconfigurations, unpatched nodes, and over-privileged credentials pile up. This intermediate course shows you how to architect, harden, and defend containerized workloads on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with a zero-trust, secure-by-default posture.

Harden Clusters and Nodes

You’ll establish baseline security with GKE Autopilot, which automates cluster hardening and patch management. Then you’ll reduce the attack surface of GKE worker nodes and control how human administrators access your clusters.

Secure Identities, Secrets, and the Supply Chain

Next, you’ll replace static service account keys with keyless, short-lived, least-privilege identities for your pods. You’ll protect sensitive credentials with Secret Manager and encrypt Kubernetes Secrets in etcd using Cloud KMS, then explore software supply chain security and runtime isolation. A hands-on lab brings it together. By the end, you’ll be able to secure containers at every phase of their lifecycle.