Dynamic and Context-Aware Security Policies for the Cloud Using... - Shriti Priya & Julian Stephen
Channel: The Linux Foundation
Date: 2023-05-25

Dynamic and Context-Aware Security Policies for the Cloud Using Service Mesh - Shriti Priya & Julian James Stephen, IBM Thomas J Watson Research Center

Widespread adoption of cloud-based, micro-service applications is forcing organizations to rethink their access and admission control policies. Even though identity and access management (IAM) services offer complex authentication capabilities, policy-based, service to service authorization and admission control is still cumbersome and not easily adaptable to changing cloud context. In this talk, we will present the design of an access control system capable of formulating and evaluating dynamic cloud security policies using all available context. This policy evaluation system collects, curates and correlates information from the service mesh, and other monitoring and detection tools. This includes service to service calls, service to database calls and other relevant signals (image vulnerabilities, data criticality, etc.). This rich metadata allows temporal and behavioral policies and leverage AI to identify policy parameter thresholds. Policies are expressed and evaluated in Open Policy Agent (OPA) and enforced using the service mesh. This talk will show how you can build fine-grained authorization policies, enforce NIST controls (800-53/AC), administer access limits to sensitive data and more.