Securing Cloud-Native Applications

Today at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2022 in Detroit, Cisco unveiled FunctionClarity, a new open source project which helps developers secure the serverless functions that fundamentally reduce the amount of code necessary to create and deploy cloud-native applications.

Based on SigStore, FunctionClarity lets users sign the code of serverless functions, and authenticate their integrity from a trusted pipeline, when deployed across any cloud environment. It allows both keyless and key pair methods to eliminate exposure of the code at runtime.

The launch of FunctionClarity comes as the use of serverless technologies is growing exponentially. For example, AWS (Amazon Web Services) Lambda functions are now invoked 3.5 times more often compared to just two years ago.

OpenClarity is a trio of projects

FunctionClarity is the third chapter in the OpenClarity set of open source projects which help solve problems around application security, the software supply chain, and the “Shift Left” movement in software development that fully considers security from the outset.

Chapter 1: At KubeCon North America in 2021, Cisco released APIClarity, an open source API tool for visualizing and identifying potential risks such as API drift, shadow and zombie APIs. It builds and analyzes the OpenAPI specifications for all APIs in your environment.

Chapter 2: In May at KubeCon Europe 2022, we followed with the release of KubeClarity, an open source tool for detection and management of Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) and vulnerabilities of container images and filesystems. It scans both runtime Kubernetes clusters and CI/CD pipelines for enhanced software supply chain security.

You can learn more about the trio of OpenClarity projects at https://openclarity.io.

Building the Application-First Future

Modern, distributed application software solves real-world business problems. Increasingly, those software assets come from everywhere – internal, cloud, SaaS, open source – run anywhere, and are accessed from anyplace via APIs and service calls.

In this distributed environment, the expanding attack surface for these applications includes APIs and serverless interfaces, vulnerable services, and opaque software assets. It’s no surprise APIs and service endpoints have become preferred threat vectors with the average company experiencing a 95% rate of API security incidents. There has been a 540% increase in the number of API-related security vulnerabilities recorded in the OVE database between 2015 and last year.

Transparency about your software tools and assets, and the security of APIs and interfaces, from development all the way through to production are therefore critical to ensuring you, your customers and end users are protected.

Panoptica brings 360-degree visibility and remediation options to your application attack surfaces in a single, modular application-security solution. As a freemium SaaS service that’s easy to get started and consume, it connects through your application SDL workflows, toolchains, and runtime to help your teams shift everywhere. It lets developers, SREs and security experts seamlessly collaborate within the same environment.

Nikolas Mousorous, DevOps Engineer, Marlow Navigation: “Existing security solutions we had in our environment couldn’t address our transition to modern microservice-based applications. Working with Panoptica, we were able to insert security controls into our complex environment seamlessly for secure application deployment and connectivity.”

Calisti is a complementary solution that provides discoverability, connectivity, SLO, and lifecycle management across all your application services – from greenfield, cloud-native applications to hybrid, traditional, and cloud-based applications. Calisti integrates seamlessly into your cloud operating environments, and allows your SRE, DevOps and cloud platform teams to easily connect, scale and manage the performance of application services across virtual machines (VMs), Kafka instances, and Istio service meshes, across any cloud or on-premises footprint.

Cisco Leading in Open Source

Cisco is taking an increasingly leading role in open source, stepping up contributions and driving the open source movement forward across the enterprise application ecosystem.

We have been a Platinum Member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) since it was founded, and we have been Diamond Sponsors of KubeCon for every year since its inception. We also serve as members of the steering committee for the Linux Foundation’s TODO Group, we are a Platinum sponsor of Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), LF Networking, LF Public Health, and we are Gold or Premier for Open19, Linux Foundation, and the Bytecode Alliance.

Along with the trio of OpenClarity projects, we have launched, maintain, and contribute to many other cloud-native projects including Dex, Bank Vaults, Istio Operator, K Operator, Logging Operator, Zot, and Network Service Mesh, and we are among the top five contributors to OpenTelemetry.

Calisti and Panoptica are both built on the open source foundation of the above-mentioned projects.

Join Us at KubeCon in Detroit

Come see Cisco at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2022 this week at the Cisco Solutions Showcase, Booth D3 in Exhibit Hall B, at Huntington Place in Detroit. There you can view a demo of FunctionClarity and learn more about the emerging Security, Observability, and Connectivity solutions Cisco is building. You can also find out about the latest open source projects at Cisco, including how to contribute and collaborate.

At the Cisco booth, you can get your own personalized hoodie, choosing from multiple designs to make an amazing statement, and even watch it get printed. In addition, for every theatre session and demo attendee, Cisco will donate a pair of socks to local Detroit homeless shelters so we can all give back to the community.

Additional Resources

• Discover OpenClarity, a set of complementary open source projects led by Cisco including APIClarity, KubeClarity, and FunctionClarity.
• Sign up for a free tier and get started right away with Calisti and Panoptica. Grow and expand your horizons with Pro and Enterprise tiers.
• Learn about Cisco’s cloud-native and API-first products and other current ventures at at Cisco ET&I.
• Explore the open-source community and projects for reusable code at Open Source @ Cisco.

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