Cilium Network Policies: Zero-Trust Networking on Kubernetes

Kubernetes networking defaults to wide-open pod communication within a cluster. For regulated workloads, zero-trust means every connection is explicitly allowed: frontend pods reach API pods on port 8080, APIs reach Postgres on 5432, and everything else is denied.

Cilium extends standard NetworkPolicy with identity-aware rules, DNS-based policies, and Hubble for flow visibility. Combined with ingress controllers that terminate at the cluster edge, teams can map allowed paths from Internet → ingress → service → database and verify them in staging before production rollout.

cloudstrata deploys Cilium as the AKS CNI for client and internal platforms, writing policies alongside application manifests in Git. During incident response, Hubble flow logs shorten mean time to diagnosis compared to tcpdump in individual pods—especially when AI agent workloads generate unusual egress patterns.