How to enable Binary Authorization

Note: Starting with GKE on AWS version 1.28, manual policy binding to authorize the service account for Binary Authorization is no longer necessary. The required permissions are now automatically granted to this service account. You can therefore disregard step 2 in the following instructions.

To enable Binary Authorization for GKE on AWS, perform the following steps:

1. Enable the Binary Authorization API in your project:

   gcloud services enable binaryauthorization.googleapis.com \
     --project=PROJECT_ID
   

   Replace PROJECT_ID with the ID of your Google Cloud project.

2. Grant the binaryauthorization.policyEvaluator role to the Kubernetes service account associated with the Binary Authorization agent:

   gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding PROJECT_ID \
     --member=serviceAccount:PROJECT_ID.svc.id.goog[gke-system/binauthz-agent] \
     --role="roles/binaryauthorization.policyEvaluator"
   

3. Enable Binary Authorization when creating or updating a cluster. Make sure to include the flag --binauthz-evaluation-mode=PROJECT_SINGLETON_POLICY_ENFORCE since this flag enables Binary Authorization:

   Creating a cluster

   gcloud container aws clusters create CLUSTER_NAME \
     --binauthz-evaluation-mode=PROJECT_SINGLETON_POLICY_ENFORCE
   

   Replace CLUSTER_NAME with the name of your cluster.

   Updating a cluster

   gcloud container aws clusters update CLUSTER_NAME \
     --binauthz-evaluation-mode=PROJECT_SINGLETON_POLICY_ENFORCE
   

   Replace CLUSTER_NAME with the name of your cluster.

By following these steps, you ensure that only trusted and verified images are used to create Kubernetes containers in your GKE clusters. This helps to maintain a secure environment for your applications.