As microservices-based applications are increasingly deployed within large enterprises and cloud-based environments, dedicated and scalable infrastructure is needed to support a comprehensive set of security services. This infrastructure is called the Service Mesh, which can support authentication, authorization, secure service discovery, secure communication, security monitoring, as well as other security services, the National Institute of Standards and Technology wrote in a new release.
To this end, NIST announces the publication of SP 800-204A, Building Secure Microservices-based Applications Using Service-Mesh Architecture. Its purpose is to provide deployment recommendations, including configuration parameters, for Service Mesh components that span several runtime aspects of microservices-based applications to meet the security requirements of this class of applications for various scenarios. The deployment of Service Mesh components to enable these services involves multiple configurations.
The distributed cross-domain nature of microservices needs secure token service (STS), key management and encryption services for authentication and authorization, and secure communication protocols. The ephemeral nature of clustered containers by which microservices are implemented calls for secure service discovery. The availability requirement calls for: (a) resiliency techniques, such as load balancing, circuit breaking, and throttling; and (b) continuous monitoring for the health of the service.
The service mesh is the best-known approach that can facilitate specification of these requirements at a level of abstraction such that it can be uniformly and consistently defined while also being effectively implemented without making changes to individual microservice code, NIST wrote.
The purpose of this document is to provide deployment guidance for proxy-based Service Mesh components that collectively form a robust security infrastructure for supporting microservices-based applications.
Publication:
SP 800-204A (DOI)
NIST Download
Other Parts of this Publication:
SP 800-204