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Kubernetes Policy Engines

Engines that enforce rules on what can run in a cluster through admission control and audit: Kyverno and Open Policy Agent, plus built-in Kubernetes policy features.

13 topics•3 categories•Updated October 2026

Policy Engines

5 entries

Admission controllers and policy frameworks.

01KyvernoA CNCF Graduated policy engine designed for Kubernetes, using native YAML and CEL for declarative, policy-as-code governance. 02Open Policy Agent (OPA)A unified, general-purpose policy engine and framework for enforcing policy consistently across the cloud-native stack. 03OPA GatekeeperKubernetes admission controller built on OPA and Rego, enforcing policy constraints on cluster resources. 04KubewardenPolicy engine that runs policies compiled to WebAssembly. 05PolarisChecks Kubernetes configuration against best practice.

Built-in Kubernetes Features

2 entries

Policy without extra tools.

06ValidatingAdmissionPolicyKubernetes' built-in, in-process admission policies written in CEL. 07Pod Security StandardsBaseline, restricted and privileged profiles for Pod security.

Related Pages

6 entries

Related directories on this site.

08Kubernetes Security ToolsSecurity tools for clusters. 09IaC Security ToolsIaC security. 10DevSecOps ToolsDevSecOps tools. 11Kubernetes IaC ToolsInfrastructure as code for Kubernetes. 12AI-powered Intrusion Detection for K8sAI-based intrusion detection. 13Policy as Code (PaC) SoftwarePolicy engines and languages, Kubernetes admission control and cloud compliance checks, including OPA, Cedar, Sentinel and Checkov.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Kubernetes policy engine?

Software that checks resources against rules at admission time, and often audits existing resources, to block or flag configurations such as privileged containers or missing labels.

Kyverno or Open Policy Agent?

Kyverno writes policies as Kubernetes resources in YAML, which is easy for platform teams. OPA uses the Rego language and applies beyond Kubernetes. Gatekeeper brings OPA to Kubernetes admission control.

Do I still need an engine now that Kubernetes has ValidatingAdmissionPolicy?

Built-in policies cover many validation needs without extra components. Engines add mutation, generation, reporting and richer policy libraries.

What changed on this page?

The 3 original engines are kept. Kubewarden, Polaris, ValidatingAdmissionPolicy and Pod Security Standards were added.

Are the links checked?

Links were checked when this page was updated and all of them loaded.

What is the status of Kyverno and ValidatingAdmissionPolicy?

CNCF announced Kyverno's graduation on 24 March 2026. Kubernetes' built-in ValidatingAdmissionPolicy, which declares validation rules in the Common Expression Language, has been Stable since v1.30. Open Policy Agent is also a CNCF graduated project.

Which links may need a manual click?

Links were rechecked in October 2026 and all outbound links on this page returned 200 to automated checks. For related directories, see Kubernetes, Kubernetes Security Tools, CNAPP Platforms and Platform Engineering on this site.