Come for the traffic management, stay for the security

Service mesh implementations help move critical application networking functionality out of the applications and into the infrastructure. With a service mesh like Istio, for example, you can move complicated traffic routing, resiliency aspects, and top-line metric collection out of the application code. This helps you build complicated distributed systems a bit more safely. But can Istio help with solving security issues?

Christian Posta explores some of the ways Istio helps you build more secure systems with mutual TLS, OAuth 2.0, and JSON Web Token verification. Security starts with defining trust boundaries and establishing identities. Istio helps do this by leveraging SPIFEE to assign identity and lay the foundation for zero-trust application networking. Istio then leverages this identity to take over the issuance and management of workload identity documents (e.g., x509 certificates), which can then be used to provide client authentication and mTLS. Istio also helps with OAuth flows, JWT verification, RBAC/ABAC, and much more.

You may be drawn into using Istio for its traffic management functionality, but most customers Christian works with find themselves much more interested in the security aspects once they learn what they can do with it. Join in to see for yourself.