ITGSS Certified DevOps Engineer 2025 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

Kubernetes is designed to handle sensitive information, such as passwords, OAuth tokens, SSH keys, and more, through a secure mechanism known as "Secrets." The most secure and recommended storage for this sensitive data within a Kubernetes environment is etcd.

Etcd is a distributed key-value store that serves as the backing store for all cluster data, including the configuration and status of the various resources in a Kubernetes cluster. When secrets are stored in etcd, Kubernetes ensures that this sensitive information is encoded and can be encrypted at rest, thus providing an additional layer of security. Furthermore, etcd has built-in mechanisms for access control and auditing, ensuring that only authorized users and services can access the sensitive data stored within.

While other options present alternatives for data storage, they lack the security features and inherent integration with Kubernetes' architecture that etcd provides. Distributed databases and external file systems may not have the necessary safeguards to protect sensitive information adequately. User-defined repositories could vary widely in terms of security postures and practices, making them less reliable for storing secrets compared to the dedicated and secure environment that etcd offers.