POSTER: Policy-driven security-aware scheduling in Kubernetes

In Proc. of the 20th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS) — Ha Noi, Vietnam, August 25-29, 2025

Nowadays, Kubernetes is the leading platform for managing containerized application workloads. These are built of numerous pods, groups of one or more containers that are always co-located and co-scheduled on the same node. Given a pod, the scheduler performs a critical task, i.e., it finds the best possible node for its execution. This process is affected by several factors, including resource availability, hardware requirements, data processing restrictions (e.g., GDPR and CCPA), workload sensitivity, and the presence of other workloads. Developers can control the scheduling process through several methods, such as node selectors, affinity, anti-affinity, and topology spread constraints. However, this activity is cumbersome, error prone, and can easily lead to security incidents.

In this paper we propose an approach to constrain and validate pod scheduling decisions without relying on complex, handwritten node selection policies. The idea is to combine the node filtering capabilities of Kubernetes with the use of OPA Gatekeeper for automated policy enforcement. We discuss how this approach overcomes the limitation associated with existing solutions, and then describe how it is used to support corporate governance policies in common scenarios. Preliminary experiments confirm the applicability of our proposal.

@inproceedings{secure-scheduling,
    author = {Matthew Rossi and Michele Beretta and Dario Facchinetti and Stefano Paraboschi},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 20th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and
                 Communications Security (ACM ASIACCS 2025)},
    title = {POSTER: Policy-driven security-aware scheduling in Kubernetes},
    year = {2025}
}