AKS cluster should use managed identity

Medium Azure General aks-managed-identity

Applies to

Microsoft.ContainerService/managedClusters

What CGPulse checks

A resource passes this rule when identity.type must be set. Anything else is reported as a finding with the evaluated property value attached as evidence.

How to fix it

Switch to managed identity to eliminate manual secret rotation and improve security. In Azure Portal: AKS > Identity > switch to Managed identity. See: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/use-managed-identity

CLI

az aks update --ids "{id}" --enable-managed-identity

Terraform

resource "azurerm_kubernetes_cluster" "{name}" {
  name                = "{name}"
  resource_group_name = "{rg}"
  location            = var.location
  dns_prefix          = "{name}"
  identity { type = "SystemAssigned" }
  default_node_pool {
    name       = "default"
    node_count = 1
    vm_size    = "Standard_D2s_v5"
  }
}

Compliance frameworks

Cloud Security BaselineIM-3

Vendor documentation

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