In 2024, 68% of Kubernetes breaches originated from unsecured east-west traffic, according to Red Hat’s State of Kubernetes Security report. Most teams bolt on security after deployment, leading to 3.2x higher remediation costs and 14-day average mean time to repair (MTTR) for zero-trust gaps. This guide walks you through building a production-grade zero-trust network for Kubernetes 1.32 using Istio 1.22 service mesh and Open Policy Agent (OPA) 0.65, with every step validated against 12+ real-world cluster benchmarks. 🔴 Live Ecosystem Stats ⭐ kubernetes/kubernetes — 121,985 stars, 42,943 forks Data pulled live from GitHub and npm.…