As KubeCon EU approaches, it’s the perfect time to examine the evolving landscape of Kubernetes security. With container technologies becoming increasingly central to modern infrastructure, security practices continue to mature and adapt to new challenges.

Here’s our forecast of the five key trends in Kubernetes security you should watch for at this year’s event:

1. The Rise of Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM)

Security Posture Management has gained significant traction across the broader security domain, evolving as a response to increasingly complex systems and environments. From Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) to Application Security Posture Management (ASPM), organizations are prioritizing continuous monitoring and risk assessment to stay ahead of threats.

It’s no surprise that Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM) is growing in popularity, extending this philosophy to containerized environments. KSPM ensures clusters remain compliant with security best practices, policies, and frameworks like CIS benchmarks and NSA hardening guidelines. As Kubernetes adoption scales, KSPM is becoming an essential layer in security stacks, helping teams automate policy enforcement, misconfiguration detection, and runtime security analysis.

From an adoption standpoint, the trend is clear: organizations that incorporate KSPM solutions into their CI/CD pipelines and runtime monitoring experience fewer security incidents caused by misconfigurations. Open-source tools like Kubescape (recently graduated to incubation), kube-bench, and OPA/Gatekeeper offer community-driven security policies, while enterprise-grade solutions provide centralized visibility and compliance automation.

We expect several KSPM-focused sessions at KubeCon EU, showcasing how organizations are shifting left—integrating these tools into the development process rather than relying on post-deployment audits.

2. Non-Human Entity (NHE) Management Takes Center Stage

Non-Human Entities (NHEs) have become an essential component of modern security strategies, spanning cloud services, automation frameworks, and AI-driven workloads. Traditionally, identity and access management (IAM) was designed for human users, but with the proliferation of autonomous agents, service accounts, and machine-driven workflows, security teams are facing new challenges.

In Kubernetes environments, this means rethinking how service accounts, workload identities, and machine-to-machine authentication are handled. Beyond traditional API tokens, companies are pushing for granular permission models, automated identity lifecycle management, and more secure token handling to prevent unauthorized access and privilege escalation.

At KubeCon EU, expect to see presentations on Kubernetes-native identity frameworks and policy-driven access control mechanisms that address these challenges. These solutions will likely focus on zero-trust principles applied specifically to automated workloads and service-to-service communications.

3. AI-Powered Security Management

Artificial intelligence is transforming nearly every domain of engineering, and Kubernetes security is no exception. AI-powered tools are fundamentally changing how teams detect, respond to, and remediate security threats in Kubernetes environments. Given the complexity of Kubernetes clusters, traditional security approaches struggle to keep up with the sheer volume of logs, misconfigurations, and real-time threats.

AI-driven solutions like Komodor’s Klaudia AI and k8sgpt are stepping in to fill these gaps, helping teams automate troubleshooting, detect anomalies in cluster behavior, and suggest fixes before issues escalate. Another project, Kubiya, takes a chatbot-based approach to Kubernetes management, offering AI-driven automation for managing workloads and enforcing security policies via natural language commands.

Beyond anomaly detection, AI is accelerating auto-remediation workflows. Security-focused AI tools can automatically resolve misconfigurations, optimize pod security policies, and enforce network segmentation based on detected vulnerabilities.

KubeCon EU will likely feature demonstrations of these AI-powered security tools, showcasing their ability to reduce the time between detection and mitigation, improving security posture without requiring constant manual intervention.

4. Open Source Security Solutions Lead the Way

The Kubernetes ecosystem has long been fueled by open-source innovation, and security is no exception. Open-source security tools have made significant advancements, expanding their capabilities to address evolving Kubernetes threats.

Projects like Kubescape continue to mature, introducing runtime security capabilities, real-time anomaly detection, and automated RBAC analysis. Kyverno and Open Policy Agent (OPA) have seen increased adoption, enabling organizations to enforce security policies dynamically across their clusters.

Trivy, the popular open-source vulnerability scanner, has evolved beyond image scanning, now offering continuous security monitoring for Kubernetes clusters, SBOM analysis, and VEX support. For runtime security, Falco (backed by eBPF) enables deep system visibility, detecting unexpected behaviors within Kubernetes clusters in real time. Similarly, SlimToolkit (formerly DockerSlim) has refined its approach to container hardening, stripping unnecessary components from images to reduce attack surfaces.

KubeCon EU will undoubtedly spotlight these open-source security tools, with sessions focused on their implementation, integration, and real-world use cases. Attendees should pay close attention to how these projects are addressing supply chain integrity efforts, such as sigstore-based signing, SBOM generation, and automated dependency scanning.

5. Supply Chain Security Remains Critical

Software supply chain security continues to be a top concern for Kubernetes environments. The increasing adoption of third-party CRDs, cloud-native add-ons, and service mesh integrations expands the attack surface. Recent incidents like the GitHub Action tj-actions/changed-files supply chain attack (CVE-2025-30066) exposed how easily secrets and credentials can be leaked through vulnerable CI/CD dependencies.

Maintaining supply chain hygiene in Kubernetes requires continuous auditing of third-party integrations, runtime monitoring of untrusted workloads, and robust artifact verification practices. The CNCF ecosystem has grown exponentially, introducing a vast array of plugins, controllers, and custom resources that extend Kubernetes’ functionality but also introduce new security risks.

To address these challenges, Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs) and Infrastructure Bill of Materials (IBOMs) are becoming essential. Projects focused on IBOM adoption help teams map cloud assets, Kubernetes components, and IaC configurations to detect security drift and unmanaged dependencies. Meanwhile, tools like Trivy are investing in VEX (Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange) support to help security teams distinguish between theoretical vulnerabilities and those actively exploitable in production.

We anticipate numerous KubeCon EU sessions dedicated to supply chain security, offering practical guidance on implementing SBOMs, securing the build pipeline, and verifying the integrity of container images and Kubernetes manifests.

What to Look For at KubeCon EU

As we approach KubeCon EU, we’re excited to see how these security trends will be reflected in the conference schedule. Beyond the five key trends above, keep an eye out for:

• Zero Trust implementations specifically designed for Kubernetes environments
• Advancements in microsegmentation and service mesh security
• New approaches to vulnerability management that go beyond detection to automated remediation
• Real-world case studies of organizations that have successfully integrated security into their Kubernetes workflows

Meet Root at KubeCon EU

Visit us at Booth N761! The Root team will be at KubeCon EU showcasing how our patent-pending Automated Vulnerability Remediation (AVR) technology is transforming container security.

Our patent-pending technology doesn’t just find vulnerabilities—it fixes them automatically in seconds without disrupting your workflows. Stop by to see how Root is leading the shift from detection to automated remediation in container security.

Stay tuned for our post-KubeCon follow-up, where we’ll analyze how these trends played out at the conference and highlight the most significant announcements and developments.