Abstract: Information is provided to a service mesh by a Kubernetes (K8s) controller. The information enables the service mesh to determine an IP address of application pods to which a monitoring request is destined. The K8s controller detects which of the application pods are scheduled to be monitored by the monitoring service. The K8s controller creates dummy headless services that match the application pods scheduled to be monitored. The service mesh is programmed information from the dummy headless services to cause the service mesh to intercept the monitoring request and identify that the monitoring request is destined to the dummy headless service based on the addresses. In response the service mesh encrypts the monitoring request.