This release enhances security for Kubernetes environments by adopting standard OIDC validation, which significantly reduces required operator permissions. It also delivers performance gains for core background processes and improves compatibility with standard AWS client libraries for OIDC authentication, unblocking critical workflows.

### Security Updates
- Updated Kubernetes service account authentication to use standard OIDC discovery and local JWT validation. This change enhances security by removing the need for cluster-level `tokenreviews` permissions for the operator, aligning with the principle of least privilege. (#1128)

### Improvements
- Optimized a core path-joining function to reduce CPU and memory consumption during I/O-intensive background tasks like data scanning and lifecycle transitions. (#1274)
- Enriched Admin API responses for LDAP service accounts and access keys to include `name` and `description` fields, simplifying credential identification and management. (#1284)

### Bug Fixes
- Resolved an OIDC authentication incompatibility with official AWS client libraries. Requests using a dummy `RoleARN` are now correctly processed, enabling claim-based policies without client-side errors. (#1283)
- Corrected an issue where Admin API queries for server pools and erasure sets returned unsorted results, ensuring consistent and predictable pagination. (#1279)
- Addressed a race condition that could cause a cluster to fail during startup by ensuring all grid services are registered before operations begin. (#1286)