Navigating the Future: Insights for Developers on Observability and Cloud Native Security

Catch up on hot topics and ideas from the DevNet Zone at Cisco Live 2023 in Las Vegas

Estimated read time: 8 minutes

The DevNet Zone at Cisco Live 2023 in Las Vegas was the place to gain hands-on experience with Cisco tools, code, and other developer resources. As industries fast-track their shift toward the cloud, the demand to understand system observability and strengthen cloud native application security is continuing to increase. The DevNet presenters at Cisco Live stepped up to the challenge, addressing these topics head-on to break down complexities and share actionable best practice solutions with the Cisco community. Keep reading to explore key insights and on-demand content from the show floor.

Embracing the potential of comprehensive system visibility? Here’s what you need to know:

Key Insight 1:
Simplifying networking and security is essential for developer productivity

With the increasing complexity of distributed architecture, hybrid work environments, and multi-cloud operations, developers face challenges in managing and securing applications effectively. Technology is the key to simplifying the process of building and maintaining observability and security practices. Using the right tools strategically can help you gain a complete view of your application, from the front-end user interface to the back-end infrastructure and services.

Key Insight 2:
Observability enables efficient troubleshooting and optimization

Observability is emerging as a crucial capability for developers to streamline troubleshooting and optimize application performance. The ability to access a full-stack observability platform empowers developers with deep visibility and insights across users, applications, and infrastructure. By using observability tools, developers can proactively identify and resolve issues, gain real-time data-driven insights, and optimize resource allocation, resulting in enhanced user experiences and reduced downtime.

Key Insight 3:
Cloud native architecture demands integrated security practices

With the rise in the adoption of cloud native architecture, developers must prioritize integrated security practices starting from the earliest stages of application development. Security needs to be designed into applications from the first line of code, ensuring end-to-end protection in today’s distributed environment. It’s critical to reduce the friction and silos between teams and instead come together to address security throughout the entire software development cycle.

Key Insight 4:
AI and automation enhance threat detection and mitigation

Developers can combine the power of AI and automation to strengthen their threat detection and mitigation capabilities. Using AI-driven analysis and deep human insights enables organizations to detect and respond to advanced threats efficiently. With the ability to absorb vast amounts of security events, AI-powered security solutions can provide developers with the scale and speed required to stay ahead of evolving cyber threats, ensuring robust protection for their applications and systems.

Key Insight 5:
Seamless cloud native operations require you to embrace a unified observability platform

Enterprises face the challenge of dealing with multiple observability tools across various teams, leading to fragmented processes and siloed workflows. AppOps, DevOps, NetOps, InfraOps, and SecOps rely on their own set of tools and methodologies, hindering effective tracking and resolution of production issues. To overcome these hurdles, organizations need a unified observability platform that brings all personas together, fostering collaborative problem-solving and accelerating incident response. Additionally, with the proliferation of cloud sprawl and diverse cloud providers, a unified observability platform becomes essential for simplifying cloud native deployments and operations. By adopting such a platform, developers can gain comprehensive visibility across all systems, optimize cloud performance, and ensure consistent monitoring and management practices.

Jump into the latest observability and security solutions announced at the show

• Cisco Panoptica, the cloud native application security solution that provides end-to-end lifecycle protection for cloud native application environments, including code and build protection.
• Cisco Full-Stack Observability Platform, an open and extensible, API-driven Full-Stack Observability (FSO) platform built on OpenTelemetry and anchored on metrics, events, logs, and traces (MELT).

Explore cloud native application security with Gene Kim and Kelsey Hightower

Watch the on-demand video replay of  “Speed vs Security: Protecting Cloud Native Environments.” This is a conversation recorded live on the Cisco Live show floor. Learn about efficient, lightweight cloud native application security with two industry luminaries. Watch the event on demand now to get insights and advice from presenters Gene Kim, researcher and bestselling author of The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win, Kelsey Hightower, Distinguished Engineer at Google Cloud, and Stephen Augustus, Head of Open Source at Cisco, led by moderator Michael Chenetz, Technical Marketing Engineer at Cisco. They cover:

• How to embrace platform-level security measures and understand security in your domain
• How the relationship between developers and network professionals is evolving
• More about how intentionality leads to clear, efficient, and secure operations

Relive the excitement of Cisco Live

Looking for a quick dive into the latest ideas in technology? Check out this list of curated lighting talks from Cisco Live.

The Coders, the Dreamers, and Me
A lunch and learn with the members of the Developer Community about connection, engagement, and recognition. Guests included community VIPs, members of the learning and developer communities, and social media experts. Come join the fun of AI-generated music!

Automatic Webex Bot Deployment Using Alexa Skill
A quick demo where we walk through some basic DevOps principles being leveraged for end-to-end automation and deploy a bot using Webex SDK. This session focuses on using Alexa skill to integrate with AWS Lambda to build a CI/CD pipeline and deploy a bot on a web server.

The World of NSO Web UI
In this session Jorge Mira goes through the basics of the device and service configuration, the creation of users and groups, and the application of rules to define the correct accesses regarding every user role, using the NSO Web UI only.

Quantum Security and API Interaction for Post-Quantum Cryptography
Join our Quantum Enthusiast Vinay Saini to learn about quantum computing fundamentals, what you need to start using quantum security with Cisco Devices, and how APIs-based integration works between Cisco Devices and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) devices.

Monitoring your Infrastructure with Grafana – your app, your house, your everything
Grafana allows you to query, visualize, and alert on and understand your metrics no matter where they are stored. Create, explore, and share beautiful dashboards with your team and foster a data-driven culture. In this session, Rafael Guerra introduces the basic concepts and how you can set up your own Grafana.

Dive into DevNet Zone highlights from each day at Cisco Live

Discover the best technical workshops, lightning talks, and takeovers that happened each day in the DevNet Zone with these recap videos hosted by Kanwal and Jeff.

Day 1  |  Day 2  |  Day 3  |  Day 4

Ready to get started?

These resources will help you take your next step toward optimizing your observability and security practices.

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