Enable Binary Authorization

Note: Starting with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Enterprise edition 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 attached clusters, 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 registering or updating a cluster.

   Register a cluster

   To enable Binary Authorization when registering a cluster, use the gcloud container attached clusters register command. Follow the instructions in attach your CNCF conformant cluster, and include the optional argument --binauthz-evaluation-mode=PROJECT_SINGLETON_POLICY_ENFORCE:

   gcloud container attached clusters register CLUSTER_NAME \
     ...
     --binauthz-evaluation-mode=PROJECT_SINGLETON_POLICY_ENFORCE
   

   Replace CLUSTER_NAME with the name of your cluster.

   Update a cluster

   To enable Binary Authorization when updating a cluster, use the gcloud container attached clusters update command. Follow the instructions in update your CNCF conformant cluster, and include the optional argument --binauthz-evaluation-mode=PROJECT_SINGLETON_POLICY_ENFORCE:

   gcloud container attached 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.

Configure policies

Enabling Binary Authorization alone doesn't automatically protect your cluster. By default, it allows all container images to be deployed if no policy is configured. This means that to effectively secure your cluster, you need to define and enforce a policy that specifies which images are allowed. To learn how to configure a Binary Authorization policy, see Configure a policy using the Google Cloud CLI.