Paralus: OSS Zero-Trust Access for Kubernetes

TL;DR, What is Paralus?

Paralus is a CNCF sandbox project that brings zero-trust security to Kubernetes access. Instead of juggling risky, static kubeconfig files, it gives developers just-in-time (JIT) access through your existing identity provider (like Okta or Azure AD). For security teams, this means managing policies and receiving a full audit trail of every `kubectl` command from a single control plane. It’s all about making access simple for developers and secure for the entire organization.

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At-a-Glance

• URL: github.com/paralus/paralus

• License: Apache-2.0

• Primary Language: Go

• Stars: 1.1k

• Last Release: May, 2025

• Topics/Tags: access-management, cloud-security, k8s-access-management, kubernetes-security, zero-trust-security, ztka

Common use cases

1. Streamline Developer Onboarding and Offboarding: Add new developers to an IdP group, and they automatically get scoped access to the clusters they need. When they leave, removing them from the IdP instantly revokes all Kubernetes access, simplifying the entire user lifecycle.

2. Secure “Break Glass” Access for SREs: An on-call SRE can request temporary, elevated privileges to production clusters during an incident. The session is granted on demand and fully audited, providing a secure and traceable workflow for emergency response without persistent admin rights.

3.  Automate Secure CI/CD Deployments: Your CI/CD pipelines can authenticate using a machine identity to receive short-lived, narrowly-scoped tokens for deploying applications. This eliminates the need to store long-lived, high-privilege credentials as static repository secrets, helping to secure your software supply chain.

4.  Simplify Compliance and Audit Reporting: Security teams can use the centralized audit trail to demonstrate compliance with standards like SOC 2 or HIPAA. It's easy to generate reports showing exactly who accessed which cluster, what commands they ran, and when.

5.  Standardize Multi-Cluster Access for Operations: An operations team can manage access policies for dev, staging, and prod clusters across the organization from a single interface. This ensures consistent permissions and a unified security posture, simplifying management at scale.

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How does Paralus work?

Paralus operates on a zero-trust model, using a central control plane as a broker for all access to your Kubernetes clusters. When a developer needs access, they authenticate via the `pctl` CLI, which connects to your organization’s identity provider (e.g., Okta, Azure AD). Once authenticated, the control plane checks their permissions and generates temporary credentials for the specific cluster they need. All `kubectl` traffic is then securely proxied through the control plane, which logs every command for a complete audit trail—all without ever exposing your Kubernetes API servers to the internet.

Let's break down the key operations:

• Decoupled Control Plane & Agent: The architecture is built around a central control plane, deployed separately from your workloads, which handles all authentication, access policies, and audit logs. A lightweight agent deployed in each target cluster initiates a secure connection *out* to the control plane.

• Outbound gRPC/mTLS Channel: The agent establishes a persistent, outbound-only mTLS channel. This is a game-changer for security because it means your managed cluster’s Kubernetes API server never needs to be exposed to the internet, closing off a major attack vector.

• Just-in-Time (JIT) Access: Instead of using static credentials that can be lost or stolen, Paralus creates them on demand. When a user is authorized, the control plane signals the agent to create a temporary service account and RoleBinding within the cluster. It then generates a short-lived `kubeconfig` tied to these ephemeral permissions.

• Centralized API Proxy & Auditing: Every user request is sent to the control plane first. It authenticates the request, logs it, and then forwards it to the correct cluster through the secure agent tunnel. This provides a single point of enforcement and visibility for your security teams.

Core Capabilities

1.  Zero-Trust Kubernetes Access with IdP Integration: Paralus shifts your security posture from network perimeters to a stronger, identity-centric model. By integrating with IdPs like Okta and Azure AD via OIDC-based SSO, it makes sure every access request is authenticated against a single source of truth. It also streamlines user lifecycle management by mapping IdP groups to Kubernetes roles, enabling centralized control and automatic access revocation—essential for effective multi-cluster security.

2.  Just-in-Time (JIT) Service Accounts: Paralus embodies the principle of least privilege by dynamically creating temporary Kubernetes service accounts and RoleBindings that exist *only* for the duration of a user's session. These ephemeral credentials are created on demand, they are short‑lived and tightly scoped, and revocation is immediate and auditable. This drastically shrinks your internal attack surface by ensuring that permissions exist only when absolutely necessary, preventing the risks of lingering, over-privileged accounts.

3.  Centralized, Session-Based Audit Logs: Get unparalleled visibility by proxying all `kubectl` traffic through a single control plane. Paralus creates a complete and immutable audit trail, logging every command executed and linking it to the user's IdP identity, the target cluster, and the specific session. This centralized log is invaluable for security audits, meeting compliance requirements like SOC 2 and HIPAA, and performing effective incident response.

4.  Dynamic and Scoped Kubeconfig Management: Eliminate the operational nightmare and security risk of distributing static, long-lived kubeconfig files. Using the pctl CLI tool, users receive temporary, automatically rotating kubeconfig files that are precisely scoped to their assigned roles and permissions. This prevents credential leakage and dramatically limits the window for an attacker if a developer's machine is compromised, improving your overall security posture.

5.  Centralized Multi-Cluster Policy Enforcement: You can define and manage access policies for your entire fleet of Kubernetes clusters from a single control plane. By mapping IdP groups to specific Kubernetes roles across different environments (dev, staging, prod), you can ensure consistent and standardized permissions. This simplifies governance, reduces configuration drift, and gives you a unified view of who can access what, no matter how many clusters you're managing.

Limitations

1.  The Control Plane is a Critical Dependency: Since all access is proxied through the central Paralus control plane, its availability is critical. If the control plane goes down, access to all managed Kubernetes clusters is lost. You’ll need to deploy it with high availability in mind to avoid this single point of failure.

2.  Initial Setup and Configuration Overhead: Implementing Paralus requires a dedicated effort to integrate with your identity providers, configure network paths, and deploy the control plane. Migrating your teams from traditional kubeconfig workflows to this new identity-driven process also involves training and a shift in developer habits, so be prepared for an initial investment of time.

3.  Potential Network Architecture Constraints: The proxy-based model needs reliable network connectivity between users, the control plane, and your clusters. In highly segmented or air-gapped environments with strict firewalls, ensuring all components can communicate correctly may introduce architectural challenges or require complex network configurations.

4.  It’s Focused on Access Control, Not Full-Spectrum Security: Paralus excels at identity-aware access control, auditing, and credential management for kubectl. It does not provide other critical security functions like runtime security, container image scanning, or network policy enforcement. To achieve a comprehensive defense-in-depth posture, you'll need to supplement it with other tools.

5.  Potential for Minor Latency in Proxied Commands: Adding a proxy layer inherently adds a network hop to every kubectl command. While this is likely negligible for most interactive use cases, highly automated CI/CD pipelines or scripts that execute thousands of rapid-fire commands could see a minor performance impact compared to direct API server access.

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Getting Started:

Ready to get started? We’ll walk you through the basic installation.

1. Prerequisites:

Make sure you have access to a Kubernetes cluster and that kubectl is properly configured.

2. Add the Paralus Helm repository:

helm repo add paralus https://paralus.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update

3. Install Paralus in your cluster (you can specify the namespace as needed):

helm install paralus paralus/ztka --namespace paralus --create-namespace

4. Monitor the installation progress:

kubectl get pods -n paralus

Wait until all pods show STATUS as Running.

5. Access the Paralus web UI:

First, get the service URL:

kubectl get svc -n paralus

Then, expose the service using port-forwarding:

kubectl port-forward svc/<DASHBOARD-SERVICE> 8080:80 -n paralus

Visit http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

6. Set up your first admin user and follow the on-screen prompts to complete the configuration

For more detailed guides, check out the official documentation: https://www.paralus.io/docs/Installation/.

Secure more than access

Paralus simplifies Kubernetes access with zero-trust controls. Wiz takes you further — unifying vulnerability, misconfiguration, identity, and data risks across your cloud.

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