Software Engineering Institute

In our quest to secure all the things, do we jump in too quickly? In this session, we'll use Istio and Linkerd as example service meshes, and look at the features we would expect from a service mesh. We'll dive into the day-1 experience with both Istio and Linkerd, and some advanced scenarios of using the service mesh. We'll compare this to border security with an app gateway, and compare and contrast the security features, complexities, and implementation costs. You'll leave with a concrete understanding of the benefits and tradeoffs you get when you pull in a service mesh, and you'll be ready to justify the investment.

This presentation by Rob Richardson was given virtually at DevSecOps Days Los Angeles 2021 on September 15, 2021. Rob Richardson is a software craftsman building web properties in ASP.NET and Node, React, and Vue. He's a Microsoft MVP, published author, frequent speaker at conferences, user groups, and community events, and a diligent teacher and student of high-quality software development. You can find this and other talks at https://robrich.org/presentations and follow him on twitter at @rob_rich.

View a graphic recording of the presentation or watch the video on YouTube