We are excited to announce that Upwind is now an official Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Autopilot partner, enabling users to seamlessly deploy Upwind and proactively secure Google Cloud workloads. Many GKE Autopilot users struggle with securing their workloads due to limited control over infrastructure and security configurations. Upwind’s integration ensures a seamless, built-in security solution without added complexity.
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Autopilot clusters don’t usually allow workloads that require elevated privileges, except for Autopilot partner workloads. An extremely limited number of Google Cloud Partners are vetted and approved, allowing them to provide specially-privileged workloads for Autopilot clusters.
Google evaluates every partner workload in a rigorous review process. This ensures that each workload has only the minimum required permissions to function correctly. Additionally, workloads must demonstrate fine-grained control over the resources they access.
“GKE Autopilot provides the most complete, scalable, and fully automated managed Kubernetes experience. Autopilot offers seamless scaling, strong out-of-the-box security, and provides a hands-off Google-managed Kubernetes experience where you pay-for-pods and only for the resources your applications’ require.”
-Victor Szalvay I Product Manager, GKE, at Google Cloud
As an official Google Autopilot Partner, Upwind provides users with the capability to seamlessly deploy automated, real-time security for workloads running within the GKE Autopilot environment.
What is GKE Autopilot?
GKE Autopilot is a fully-managed offering for running Kubernetes workloads on Google Cloud, managing infrastructure in the background. This allows you to deploy and scale Kubernetes applications efficiently, while maintaining familiar development workflows, and without the need for extensive architectural changes. GKE Autopilot removes some of the customer responsibility for running Kubernetes workloads on Google Cloud, allowing users to focus efforts on deploying and managing applications rather than managing the underlying infrastructure and cluster operations.
GKE Autopilot simplifies Kubernetes management, but users often face challenges in balancing efficiency, cost, and security. Leveraging GKE Autopilot offers users several benefits including:
- Simplified Operations: Autopilot eliminates the need for users to manage low-level Kubernetes infrastructure tasks such as node scaling, upgrades, and hardware management. For example, users no longer need to manually provision nodes or apply security patches, as Autopilot automatically handles these tasks, reducing operational complexity. With automatic updates, workload optimization, and minimal operational overhead, it allows teams to focus on developing applications rather than managing Kubernetes infrastructure.
- Automatic Infrastructure Scaling: Autopilot automatically scales the underlying infrastructure based on application demands, ensuring that the cluster always meets the needs of running workloads without over-provisioning or under-provisioning.
- Optimized Resource Usage: GKE Autopilot’s per-pod billing model ensures users only pay for the exact resources their workloads use, optimizing cost efficiency by eliminating over-provisioning. This approach allows teams to scale dynamically while maintaining budget control and maximizing infrastructure utilization.
- Enhanced Security: GKE Autopilot clusters come with several built-in security features, such as automated security patching and integrated Identity and Access Management (IAM). These measures help mitigate risks like unpatched vulnerabilities and unauthorized access, ensuring a secure Kubernetes environment by default. The system helps ensure that the cluster infrastructure is secure by default, reducing the overhead required for manual configuration and maintenance of security policies. Google Cloud’s security updates are also automatically applied to the underlying nodes, reducing the potential attack surface.
Overall, GKE Autopilot reduces operational overhead, enhances security, and provides users with an easy-to-manage Kubernetes environment. However, securing workloads in a dynamic, managed Kubernetes environment still presents challenges, which is where Upwind’s integration comes in.
Upwind’s GKE Integration
With this integration, Upwind helps GKE Autopilot users to bake-in security for their Kubernetes clusters, enabling teams to focus on application development while maintaining robust security controls.
“We are thrilled to be one of the few technology partners approved as an official GKE Autopilot partner and believe this highlights the powerful ‘better together’ story that Google Cloud and Upwind share. This partnership gives Google Autopilot users the ability to build and scale quickly with built-in comprehensive security from Upwind – allowing them to accelerate development while proactively mitigating the risks that matter.”
-Amiram Shachar, Co-Founder and CEO, Upwind
GKE Autopilot users can easily deploy Upwind on their GKE Autopilot clusters by following these steps:
- Onboard the Upwind platform.
- Deploy a Helm chart for Upwind.
- Toggle a specific flag during installation to include the allowlist resources.
This streamlined process ensures seamless security integration with minimal manual configuration.
By using Upwind’s integration for GKE Autopilot, users automatically gain:
- Complete GKE inventory – discover the complete GKE inventory, including compute, storage, running images, and running packages – including package dependencies.
- Monitoring of GKE resource communication – view real-time and over-time GKE topology map and network communication including in cluster, in account, communication with Google Cloud services, and from or to the internet.
- Posture management – view misconfigurations, compliance, exposed secrets, malware, and external exposures.
- Real-time threat detection and response for GKE – Detect threats in real time and respond to them at the process, network, file, or system-call level.
- Vulnerability management for GKE – Discover all vulnerabilities in GKE and prioritize them based on real environmental variables.
- API security for GKE – Discover and catalog all APIs for GKE resources, monitor API traffic and requests over time, and discover all your API vulnerabilities.
- Secured Google Cloud identities – View and secure all Google Cloud identities
Leverage Upwind’s GKE integration to strengthen security for GKE Autopilot clusters with real-time threat detection and proactive defense measures, offering more comprehensive security than standard built-in protections. Upwind continuously monitors workloads, detects vulnerabilities, and prevents potential threats before they impact your environment. This allows your teams to accelerate deployment times with confidence. To learn more about Upwind’s GKE integration and Kubernetes security, visit the Upwind Documentation Center (login required) or schedule a demo.
