Container Orchestration in Security Demanding Environments at the Swedish Police Authority

Sammanfattning: The adoption of containers and container orchestration in cloud computing is motivated by many aspects, from technical and organizational to economic gains. In this climate, even security demanding organizations are interested in such technologies but need reassurance that their requirements can be satisfied. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how separation of applications could be achieved with Docker and Kubernetes such that it may satisfy the demands of the Swedish Police Authority. The investigation consisted of a literature study of research papers and official documentation as well as a technical study of iterative creation of Kubernetes clusters with various changes. A model was defined to represent the requirements for the ideal separation. In addition, a system was introduced to classify the separation requirements of the applications. The result of this thesis consists of three architectural proposals for achieving segmentation of Kubernetes cluster networking, two proposed systems to realize the segmentation, and one strategy for providing host-based separation between containers. Each proposal was evaluated and discussed with regard to suitability and risks for the Authority and parties with similar demands. The thesis concludes that a versatile application isolation can be achieved in Docker and Kubernetes. Therefore, the technologies can provide a sufficient degree of separation to be used in security demanding environments.