The Red Hat OpenShift advantage: zero trust and sovereignty

In this blog, we will learn about the Red Hat OpenShift advantage: Zero trust and sovereignty.

As organizations increasingly adopt cloud-native technologies and autonomous AI systems, there’s a growing need for security frameworks that are not only robust but also flexible. In parallel, concerns around digital sovereignty—ensuring control over where data is stored, who can access it, and how it is used—are intensifying. A forward-looking security strategy incorporates zero trust principles throughout the entire application lifecycle to meet these demands and support compliance with data locality, privacy, and legal standards.

Integrated Security and Data Governance with Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus

Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus provides a cohesive platform that integrates zero trust architecture in accordance with the Cloud Security Alliance’s guidelines. It embeds digital sovereignty throughout its layers, enabling policy automation, comprehensive data governance, workload identity, and region-aware application deployment.

Implementing Zero Trust with OpenShift

OpenShift Platform Plus aligns with the U.S. Department of Defense’s seven pillars of zero trust and delivers a foundation optimized for managing secure, sovereign workloads across diverse cloud environments. OpenShift supports zero trust architecture through these six key capabilities:

1. Automated Governance for Scalable Security

   Cloud-native environments require scalable, consistent governance—manual processes can’t keep pace. OpenShift Platform Plus uses a Policy-as-Code model to enforce configuration, compliance, and security policies automatically. These policies—stored and managed as version-controlled code—govern key elements like workload privileges, scheduling, and network traffic flow.

   With Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security and Advanced Cluster Management, organizations gain continuous validation of their environments. These tools identify and correct policy drift and unauthorized changes, ensuring persistent alignment with security standards and data sovereignty requirements across hybrid or multi-cloud infrastructures.

2. Comprehensive Observability for Enforcing Boundaries

   Effective zero trust implementation relies on real-time visibility. OpenShift integrates observability tools—monitoring, logging, audit trails, and network telemetry—with advanced security analytics. This detailed visibility supports both security objectives and digital sovereignty by tracking data movement, application behavior, and access patterns with precision.

   OpenShift Data Foundation further enhances this by showing where data resides, who accesses it, and how it is utilized. These insights ensure compliance with data governance regulations and support auditability across all layers of the stack, including AI workloads.

3. Data Residency, Lifecycle Management, and Integrity

   Red Hat OpenShift offers fine-grained control over data location and access via Red Hat Quay, which supports regional deployment through Advanced Cluster Management. This guarantees that data stays confined to approved geographic regions.

   The Trusted Software Supply Chain reinforces this control through signed software artifacts, SBOMs, and validation tools. OpenShift also allows administrators to define trusted image sources via `allowedRegistries` and prevent use of unapproved registries with `blockedRegistries`.

   The OpenShift Data Foundation supplies storage solutions for diverse use cases, from databases and streaming pipelines to scalable AI/ML applications. It includes tools for data classification, tagging, governance, and secure access, supporting both data at rest and in motion.

4. Network Isolation and Sovereign Segmentation

   OpenShift natively applies zero trust principles at the network level, using traffic segmentation, inbound and outbound policy controls, and service mesh integration to ensure workloads communicate only with approved resources.

   OpenShift enables geographic segmentation, isolating workloads within specific clusters or jurisdictions. This geo-fencing helps meet legal or regulatory requirements related to data sovereignty. These controls are orchestrated and monitored across environments through Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management.

5. Trusted Workloads with Secure Deployment Pipelines

   OpenShift embeds security into the software development lifecycle by integrating image scanning, signing, and policy-based admission control. This prevents unverified or potentially harmful workloads—such as unauthorized AI models—from being deployed.

   Geo-aware scheduling further ensures that applications are deployed only within approved compliance zones. OpenShift also introduces Zero Trust Workload Identity Manager (ZTWIM), which provisions identity to workloads using the SPIFFE/SPIRE standard, enabling secure workload communication.

   Additionally, confidential containers (in tech preview) add runtime protection, ensuring even cluster administrators can’t access sensitive workload data—further strengthening workload isolation.

6. Central Role of Identity and Access Management

   Zero trust relies heavily on identity as the basis for authorization. Red Hat’s Zero Trust Workload Identity Manager (ZTWIM), leveraging SPIFFE/SPIRE frameworks, provides workloads with cryptographically verified identities. These are used to establish secure, authenticated communication via mTLS when combined with OpenShift Service Mesh.

   Dynamic access controls are enforced using Open Policy Agent (OPA) GateKeeper within Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management. For environments requiring even deeper verification, OpenShift leverages attestation via hardware root-of-trust, ensuring identities are tied to verified runtime environments.

   Red Hat is also advancing Proof-of-Concept deployments for on-premises confidential containers, further extending secure identity management into bare metal environments.

Securing AI Workloads with Zero Trust and Sovereignty

With integrated automation, full-stack observability, secure workload identity, and region-aware deployment capabilities, Red Hat OpenShift provides the foundation for running secure, compliant AI workloads. Its investment in confidential computing—including confidential RHEL and containers—expands the ability to define and enforce trust boundaries around sensitive applications.

Red Hat OpenShift is engineered with zero trust and digital sovereignty at its core, empowering organizations to deploy high-performance AI and cloud-native workloads securely across hybrid and multi-cloud ecosystems.