Identity-Native Infrastructure Access Management: Preventing Breaches by Eliminating Secrets and Adopting Zero Trust

Traditional secret-based credentials cannot scale to meet the complexity and size of cloud and on-premises infrastructure. This book provides a practical approach to securing access to diverse infrastructure components, from bare metal to ephemeral containers, consistently and simply. It explains the four pillars of access, why every attack follows the same pattern, and how to implement identity-based access across your entire infrastructure with digital certificates. It also highlights the need for secret-based credentials to go away and provides authentication and authorization methods for gaining access to and permission for using protected resources.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 154 pages
Publication date: 29 September 2023
Publisher: O'Reilly Media

Traditional secret-based credentials are insufficient to meet the complexity and size of modern cloud and on-premises infrastructure. Today's applications are distributed across various clouds, colocation facilities, and on-prem data centers, each with its own set of attack vectors and protocols. Securing access to diverse infrastructure components, ranging from bare metal to ephemeral containers, consistently and simply is a challenge.

In their practical book, authors Ev Kontsevoy, Sakshyam Shah, and Peter Conrad break down this topic into manageable sections. They explore how different parts of the approach fit together, enabling engineering teams to build more secure applications without compromising productivity.

The book covers the four pillars of access: connectivity, authentication, authorization, and audit. It explains why every attack follows a predictable pattern and how to make it impossible. It also provides guidance on implementing identity-based access across your entire infrastructure using digital certificates.

The authors argue that secret-based credentials are outdated and should be replaced with more secure methods. They discuss various authentication and authorization methods for gaining access to protected resources, including servers, databases, Kubernetes Pods, and internal applications such as Jenkins and GitLab.

By leveraging the principles outlined in this book, organizations can enhance their security posture and protect their valuable assets from cyber threats. The book is a valuable resource for IT professionals, security experts, and anyone interested in improving the security of their infrastructure.

Weight: 284g
Dimension: 235 x 178 x 9 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781098131890