/cncf-sig-security

Working Group: Secure Access for Everyone (SAFE)

Apache License 2.0Apache-2.0

CNCF Special Interest Group for Security (SIG-Security)

Objective

SIG-Security facilitates collaboration to discover and produce resources which enable secure access, policy control and safety for operators, administrators, developers, and end-users across the cloud native ecosystem.

Background

“Cloud Native” is open source cloud computing for applications — a complete trusted toolkit for modern architectures (CNCF presentation). There are multiple projects which address key parts of the problem of providing access controls and addressing safety concerns. Each of these adds value, yet for these technical solutions to be capable of working well together and manageable to operate they will need a minimal shared context of what defines a secure system architecture.

Vision

There is a future where operators, administrators and developers feel confident creating new cloud native applications. They use cloud technologies with clear understanding of risks and the ability to validate that their security policy decisions are reflected in deployed software.

We envision that there could exist an ecosystem of tools that can simplify the experience of cloud native operators, administrators and developers, including:

  1. System security architecture that understands and accommodates the ever growing heterogeneity of systems and provides a framework to protect resources and data while servicing their users
  2. Common vocabulary and open source libraries that make it easy for developers to create and deploy apps that meet system security requirements
  3. Common libraries and protocols that enable people to reason about the security of the system, such as auditing and explainability features.

Charter

The charter of the working group is to reduce risk that cloud native applications expose end user data or allow other unintended access. Distributed deployments across heterogeneous infrastructure are increasingly common for cloud native applications. The working group sees common need patterns in cloud-native application architecture to improve the security of the systems. Without common ways to programatically ensure consistent policy, it is increasingly difficult to evaluate system architecture security at scale. We propose that the creation of open source libraries, if needed, that enable interoperability across software and providers will enable the adoption of common protocols for access control. This will in turn accelerate the adoption of cloud-native application development models, as well as streamline operations for both cloud and traditional infrastructure.

Members

Related Groups

History

Communications

Anyone is welcome to join our open discussions of WG projects and share news related to the group's mission and charter. Much of the work of the group happens outside of WG meetings and we encourage project teams to share progress updates or post questions in these channels:

Meeting Time

The Security SIG group meets every Friday at 11:00am PT (USA Pacific):

Join: https://zoom.us/j/665428022

Or iPhone one-tap:

  • US: +16699006833,,665428022# or +16468769923,,665428022#

Or Telephone:

In Person Meetings

Please let us know if you are going and if you are interested in attending (or helping to organize!) an in-person meetup. Create a github issue for an event and add to list below:

  • KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, Barcelona, Spain, May 20 – 23, 2019 - [issue#127]
  • KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, San Diego, CA - Nov 18 – 21, 2019 - [issue#128]

Past

  • KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, North America, Dec 11-13, 2018 - issue#29
  • KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, Shanghai, Nov 14-15, 2018 - issue#28
  • KubeConEU May 2-4, 2018 in Copenhagen, Denmark (notes)

Meeting Minutes