A Love Letter to Isolation - Kelly Shortridge, Fastly
Channel: CNCF [Cloud Native Computing Foundation]
Date: 2023-11-13

A Love Letter to Isolation - Kelly Shortridge, Fastly

Isolation is the unsung hero of modern computing. Without it, we couldn’t build many of the systems on which we depend today. It’s a core design element for how we can sustain resilience against failures, whether of the performance or cyberattack variety. Yet, when we hear calls for Secure by Design or securing the software supply chain, isolation is rarely mentioned as a solution. In the land of Wasm, its auspicious security properties aren’t always understood, either. What are we to do to ensure isolation is harnessed to its greatest effect? We write a love letter to isolation, of course! This talk crystallizes its benefits to resilience and security. We’ll start by exploring what isolation means in the context of systems resilience then describe isolation across processes, users, apps/sites, networks, and browsers. With that foundation, we’ll extol the Wasm Component Model as a scintillating solution for security by design and supply chain security.