What Is a Service Mesh?
A service mesh is a configurable infrastructure layer for microservices-based applications that makes communication between service instances flexible, reliable, and fast. It typically includes features such as traffic management, service discovery, load balancing, and security.
A service mesh is often implemented as a distributed set of proxies deployed alongside application code, and can be managed using a control plane. Examples of service mesh solutions include Istio, Linkerd, and Consul Connect.
What Is Application Security?
Application security refers to the protection of software applications from threats and vulnerabilities. This includes measures to prevent unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction of the application and the data it processes.
Application security encompasses a wide range of practices, including secure coding, input validation, authentication, and access controls, and threat modeling. It also includes the use of tools such as web application firewalls, runtime application self-protection (RASP), and application security testing to identify and remediate vulnerabilities.
How a Service Mesh Boosts Application Security
Enabling Zero Trust
Zero trust is a security architecture that assumes that all network traffic is untrusted and requires verification before it is allowed to access any resources. In a service mesh, this is typically achieved by using mutual Transport Layer Security (mTLS) to encrypt all communication between service instances, and by using access control policies to limit which services are allowed to communicate with each other.
By encrypting all traffic and limiting communication to only authorized services, a service mesh can help prevent unauthorized access and protect against a variety of attacks, such as man-in-the-middle attacks, eavesdropping, and data exfiltration. Additionally, by providing fine-grained control over traffic flow, a service mesh can help limit the blast radius of a security incident, reducing the potential impact of a successful attack.
Increased Visibility
A service mesh can also help boost application security by increasing visibility into communication between service instances. By providing a detailed view of all traffic flowing through the mesh, a service mesh can help identify and troubleshoot security issues, such as misconfigured access controls or unexpected communication patterns.
One of the key features of a service mesh is observability, which enables to monitor and collect detailed metrics, traces, and logs from the service mesh proxies, and to aggregate and analyze them in a centralized manner. This allows security teams to gain a deeper understanding of the application's behavior, identify potential security risks, and take proactive measures to mitigate them.
Authentication, Authorisation, and Encryption
Authentication is the process of verifying the identity of a user, device, or service. A service mesh can use mutual Transport Layer Security (mTLS) to authenticate service instances, ensuring that only authorized services can communicate with each other. This can help prevent unauthorized access and protect against a variety of attacks, such as man-in-the-middle attacks, eavesdropping, and data exfiltration.
Authorization is the process of determining whether a user, device, or service has access to a specific resource. A service mesh can use access control policies to limit which services are allowed to communicate with each other. This can help to limit the blast radius of a security incident, reducing the potential impact of a successful attack.
Encryption is the process of converting plain text into unreadable text. A service mesh can use mTLS to encrypt all communication between service instances, protecting data in transit from being read or modified by unauthorized parties. This can help to prevent eavesdropping and data exfiltration.
Securing Multi-Cloud Environments
A multi-cloud environment is one in which an organization uses multiple cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, to run their applications. In such an environment, security teams need to be able to enforce consistent security policies across all cloud providers, regardless of the underlying infrastructure.
A service mesh can provide a consistent security model across multiple cloud providers by using a common set of security features, such as authentication, authorization, and encryption, regardless of the underlying infrastructure. This allows security teams to enforce consistent security policies across all cloud providers, reducing the complexity of managing security in a multi-cloud environment.
Controlled Rollouts of New Services
When introducing new services to an application, it is important to be able to test and validate them before making them available to all users. A service mesh can help to achieve this by providing a way to route traffic to new services in a controlled manner.
One of the key features of a service mesh is traffic management, which allows to define and enforce routing rules, this enables to route a percentage of traffic to new services, while still allowing the majority of traffic to continue to be routed to the existing, stable services. This allows security teams to test and validate new services in a controlled manner, before making them available to all users.
Conclusion
In conclusion, by using mTLS to encrypt all communication between service instances, access control policies to limit which services are allowed to communicate with each other, and observability and security features such as distributed tracing, a service mesh can help improve the overall security posture of the application and reduce the risk of security incidents.
Additionally, by providing a consistent security model across multiple cloud providers, and by offering controlled rollouts of new services, a service mesh can help to improve security in a multi-cloud environment and reduce the risk of introducing new services. All of these features make service meshes powerful tools to enhance the security of microservices applications.
Author Bio: Gilad David Maayan
Gilad David Maayan is a technology writer who has worked with over 150 technology companies including SAP, Imperva, Samsung NEXT, NetApp and Check Point, producing technical and thought leadership content that elucidates technical solutions for developers and IT leadership. Today he heads Agile SEO, the leading marketing agency in the technology industry.