FIPS 140-3 on EKS: Bottlerocket OS and KMS Hardware Modules

Enforcing FIPS 140-3 compliance on an EKS cluster means locking down every layer — from the OS to the key management hardware — and this episode walks through exactly how Bottlerocket and AWS KMS make that possible.

You'll learn:

• Why Bottlerocket OS ships with a FIPS-validated kernel and how to verify its cryptographic module status at node bootstrap
• How AWS KMS custom key stores backed by CloudHSM satisfy the hardware security module requirement under FIPS 140-3
• Enforcing TLS 1.2+ with FIPS-approved cipher suites across EKS control plane and data plane communication
• IAM and pod-level controls to ensure workloads only call FIPS-compliant API endpoints
• Common audit failures — weak cipher negotiation, unvalidated node images — and how to catch them before an assessor does

Keywords: FIPS 140-3 EKS, Bottlerocket FIPS compliance, AWS KMS CloudHSM, EKS security hardening, FIPS validated Kubernetes

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