AWS EKS Security Best Practices [Cheat Sheet]

1. EKS security requires layered, defense-in-depth controls The cheat sheet makes it clear there’s no single “silver bullet.” You need RBAC, network policies, cluster hardening, secure workloads, runtime monitoring, and compliance working together to actually reduce the attack surface
2. Least privilege – everywhere – is the foundation Across RBAC, IAM roles for pods (IRSA/Pod Identity), network restrictions, PSA, and secret handling, the doc repeatedly reinforces minimizing permissions and exposure at every layer
3. Security doesn’t stop at deployment – continuous monitoring is mandatory Logging, audit policies, GuardDuty runtime detection, configuration drift monitoring, and policy-as-code are core practices the guide treats as non-negotiable for ongoing EKS security

Who this guide is for

Platform and DevOps teams running EKS clusters and responsible for cluster configuration, networking, and workload deployment.
Kubernetes administrators managing RBAC, security policies, and cluster lifecycle.
Cloud security teams focused on runtime threats, compliance, and reducing Kubernetes attack surface.
Engineers building containerized apps who need to understand how their workloads interact with cluster security controls.

RBAC best practices and example Role/RoleBinding YAMLs.
Network security guidance, including pod-level network policies, security groups, and eBPF/service mesh options.
Cluster hardening techniques, including private endpoints, IRSA/Pod Identity, and encryption configurations.
Workload security, covering PSA, secret management (KMS, Secrets Manager), and image scanning/signing policies.
Runtime protection, featuring GuardDuty and third-party runtime controls.
Logging & auditing, including audit policies and cluster logging setup.
Continuous compliance workflows, such as kube-bench and policy-as-code with Gatekeeper.