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Security

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When it comes to cloud computing and cloud native computing, application and network security take on a new dimension. Meeting this new set of requirements can be a challenge to companies and tool-makers currently focused on enterprise security. Witness the 2019 acquisition of cloud native security vendor Twistlock by traditional enterprise software vendor Palo Alto Networks.

Cloud native security has a new set of priorities that need to be addressed, which we will follow here closely as we track the development and adoption of cloud native security tools, as well as the evolution of traditional security tools into this marketplace. Such tools should be API-first. They need to integrate easily within DevOps and CI/CD frameworks (“DevSecOps”). They need to offer real-time feedback and they need to be easily licensed for cloud computing environments. Present-day security vendors, except those devoted to the cloud native space, such as Aqua Security, have difficulty with all these requirements (Hence the acquisitions).

What these tool and service providers should be addressing, and what we also will follow, are the new requirements that come with introducing the container and the container orchestrator into a production environment. Container images must be scanned for buggy dependencies. Security policies for pods must be established.

Google itself has thrown itself into an entirely new security architecture for its own cloud, called the Zero-Trust model, which assumes a company firewall will be breached, so it is better to secure the application at the level of the user and device permissions.

The Internet-based collaborative model of application development needs to be better addressed as well. This is sometimes referred to as supply-chain security, where you need to not only worry about the security of your code, but the code you get from other sources, as well as the authentication measures used by these third parties. One break anywhere in the chain could lead to trouble in your operations This became evident with the Docker Hub intrusion in early 2019, which also affected GitHub, BitBucket and other public/private cloud-based repositories.