Kubernetes environments introduce unique risks through poor secrets management, with vulnerabilities like Base64-encoded secrets, the “secret zero” problem, misconfigurations, and vault sprawl. Encrypting secrets at rest offers partial protection but still requires manual, error-prone rotation, as seen in breaches like CircleCI. Misuse of secrets can expose credentials across code, logs, and APIs, while secret sprawl limits visibility and weakens controls. Best practices include centralizing secrets management, avoiding hard-coded credentials and environment variables, enforcing RBAC and least privilege, rotating secrets dynamically, and auditing usage. Strong DevSecOps collaboration ensures security without slowing developer velocity.

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