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Compliance · Critical severity

AKS Cluster RBAC Not Enabled

Access is not restricted per identity, so anyone who can reach the cluster has broad control over everything running in it.

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Azureprovider
Criticalseverity
Compliancewhere it shows up
Manualfix, steps written out

AzureKubernetes

Found, explained, handed over.

Where the estate departs from your policies, frameworks and tagging rules.

01

Detect

ZopNight checks this automatically across Azure, with read-only access to the account.

02

Explain

Every finding says exactly what to change: Enable Azure RBAC on the AKS cluster.

03

Fix

The finding opens with the fix already written out, step by step, so it is one ticket, not an investigation.

Applies to
AKS Clusters on Azure
The fix, by hand
  1. Kubernetes RBAC has been on by default in new AKS clusters since 2020. The actionable lever is Azure RBAC for Kubernetes Authorization.
  2. For an eligible existing cluster: az aks update -g ‹rg› -n ‹name› --enable-azure-rbac --enable-aad. For older clusters, plan a recreate with these flags.
  3. Assign the built-in roles (Azure Kubernetes Service RBAC Reader / Writer / Admin / Cluster Admin) to Entra users + groups via AKS → Access control (IAM).
  4. Author ClusterRole / RoleBinding manifests for any fine-grained in-cluster permissions that don't map to the four built-ins.
  5. Rotate kubeconfig for operators: az aks get-credentials --overwrite-existing so the new Entra-backed token is used.
  6. Remove legacy admin kubeconfigs from CI/CD systems.

These are the steps the finding carries in the product.

Category
Compliance. Configuration drift from best practice: public access, missing MFA, unencrypted storage, deprecated runtimes.
Where it appears
The Compliance tab of Recommendations, with every affected resource listed.
Rule ID
RC-1351
Full reference

AKS Cluster RBAC Not Enabled

Related checks

AKS Cluster API Server Not PrivateAzureAKS Cluster Network Policy Not EnabledAzureAKS Cluster Diagnostic Logging Not EnabledAzureAKS Cluster Monitoring Not EnabledAzureACM Certificate Expiring SoonAWSAzure NSG Open to InternetAzure

See the compliance findings in your account.

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