Journal Article

A Container-Native IAM Framework for Secure Green Mobility: A Case Study with Keycloak and Kubernetes

Reis, Manuel J. C. S., Sousa, Alexandre, Branco, Frederico, Reis, Arsénio

2025

Overview

The rapid adoption of green mobility solutions—such as electric-vehicle sharing and intelligent transportation systems—has accelerated the integration of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, introducing complex security and performance challenges. While conceptual Identity and Access Management (IAM) frameworks exist, few are empirically validated for the scale, heterogeneity, and real-time demands of modern mobility ecosystems. This work presents a data-backed, container-native reference architecture for secure and resilient Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) in green mobility environments. The framework integrates Keycloak within a Kubernetes-orchestrated infrastructure and applies Zero Trust and defense-in-depth principles. Effectiveness is demonstrated through rigorous benchmarking across latency, throughput, memory footprint, and automated fault recovery. Compared to a monolithic baseline, the proposed architecture achieves over 300% higher throughput, 90% faster startup times, and 75% lower idle memory usage while enabling full service restoration in under one minute. This work establishes a validated deployment blueprint for IAM in IoT-driven transportation systems, offering a practical foundation for a secure and scalable mobility infrastructure.

• Publisher: MDPI AG
• Subject: Access control / Architecture / authentication and authorization / Benchmarks / Case studies / Communication / Computer architecture / Containers / Design / Efficiency / Electric vehicles / Emission standards / green mobility / Heterogeneity / identity and access management / Infrastructure / Intelligent transportation systems / Internet of Things / IoT security / Keycloak / Kubernetes / Middleware / Network latency / Real time / Service restoration / Sustainability / Vehicles / Workloads