ITGSS Certified DevOps Engineer Practice Test 2026 - Free DevOps Practice Questions and Exam Preparation Guide

The AllowPrivilegeEscalation control in Kubernetes is an important security feature that manages whether a process within a pod can gain more privileges than its parent. By default, containers run with a specific set of privileges that are mapped to the user, and this control determines if a container can elevate its privilege level beyond that.

When set to true, a container can potentially obtain more privileges than it was originally granted, which can lead to increased security risks, especially if an attacker can exploit vulnerabilities within the application running inside the container. On the other hand, if this control is set to false, it effectively locks down privilege escalation, preventing any unauthorized elevation of permissions that could compromise the system.

This control is critical in creating a secure environment, particularly in a multi-tenant architecture where different applications may run in close proximity to one another and share the same underlying infrastructure.

The other options do not accurately reflect the function of AllowPrivilegeEscalation. Preventing node upgrades relates to the management of cluster nodes, restricting outbound traffic deals with networking policies, and limiting memory usage pertains to resource management. Thus, the primary purpose of the AllowPrivilegeEscalation control is specifically focused on controlling process privilege gains.