Bridging the Gap Between Platform Usability and Security (TCN October 2024)
Hi there, Cloud Pioneers!
Welcome to this issue of The Cloud Natives! ☀️
In This Edition:
Let's dive in!
1. Do You Know why Internal Developer Platforms are the Key to Better Security...?
When platform teams embark on building an Internal Developer Platform (IDP), the goals are clear: streamline development, reduce inefficiencies, and increase developer velocity. By focusing on automation and standardization, they aim to eliminate bottlenecks like TicketOps, allowing developers to work faster and more effectively.
But as teams map out reference architectures and design Golden Paths to improve workflows, there's one challenge that looms large: security. While the main focus might be on boosting productivity, platform engineering also brings immense security benefits. Here's why your security team will love your IDP (if you've done it correctly).
Management of Access and Permissions: With access control integrated into the IDP, permissions are managed as systematically as any other resource. This ensures that access is not only granted securely but also revoked when no longer needed. By preventing privilege creep, IDPs maintain tight control over who can access sensitive systems and data.
Scalable Security Across the Organization: As IDPs scale, they enable consistent implementation of security practices, such as least privilege access control. Platform engineering allows security standards to be automatically applied across the organization, helping teams onboard to best practices effortlessly. This consistency makes managing security at scale far more efficient.
Built-in Security Through Standardization: A well-designed IDP enforces security best practices automatically. Developers follow pre-defined workflows that ensure consistent configurations, reducing the risk of ad-hoc setups that could introduce vulnerabilities. Security principles are baked into the platform, making them easier to enforce across all teams and environments.
Internal Developer Platforms do more than boost productivity—they embed security at the core of the development process.
2. Why Application Teams often struggle with Adoption (Free Express Webinar)
Many Platform Teams implement GitOps to streamline infrastructure management, automating processes and increasing efficiency. But despite the technical benefits, a common issue arises: Application Teams often struggle with adoption.
This gap is usually due to the complexity of the platform and the lack of a user-friendly interface, leading to frustration, an influx of support requests, and underutilization of the platform’s potential. But that's not the only reason.
Many platform teams forget to treat their platform as a product, neglecting to focus on user experience (UX), ease of use, and intuitive design. To ensure success, it's essential to build workflows that cater to the needs of application teams, not just platform engineers.
Other GitOps implementations fail due to insufficient training and documentation. Even a well-designed system needs clear, concise guidance so that users can fully leverage its features without constantly needing platform team intervention.
If you want to learn how to boost your platform adoption and make Infrastructure as Code (IaC) the new standard, then join our webinar "Seamless GitOps: IaC Provisioning as Easy as Online Shopping", Octoer 8th, 10-11AM (CEST).
3. Missed meshcloud Con '24? Here is what you need to know!
If you couldn’t make it to meshcloud Con ‘24 in Frankfurt, no worries! Here's a quick recap of the event's highlights and key insights.
We kicked off strong with Jan C. Simons from RheinEnergie AG, who shared valuable lessons on cloud cost management. His advice? Don’t aim for perfection, but rather focus on automating and harmonizing cost allocation for better efficiency.
Next, Marius Kießling from METRO.digital and Christian Schroer from b.telligent delivered a deep dive on securing Google Cloud at scale, offering practical security tips like avoiding service account keys and using workload identity federation.
The discussion continued with a dynamic panel on internal platform communication, where experts explored strategies for promoting platform value and overcoming adoption barriers.
Other key moments included Thomas Abbe from EnBW discussing business continuity in the cloud, and Marc Schnitzius from codecentric AG, who revealed common platform engineering pitfalls in multi-cloud environments. Stéphane Di Cesare of DKB emphasized the importance of documentation as part of the product, warning against shadow documentation.
Finally, Johannes Rudolph of meshcloud closed the event with a visionary keynote on "Platforms of the Future," followed by the announcement of the meshcloud Con '24 awards, recognizing outstanding achievements by IAV GmbH, Merck Group, and METRO.digital.
By the way, you can check out the event photos here.
Your feedback and suggestions are always welcome, so let us know what you think of this edition and what you'd like to see in future issues.
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