Linux.conf.au 2017 – Friday – Session 2

Continuously Delivering Security in the Cloud – Casey West

  • This is a talk about operation excellence
  • Why are system attacked? Because they exist
  • Resisting Change to Mitigate Risk – It’s a trap!
  • You have a choice
    • Going fast with unbounded risk
    • Going slow to mitigate risk
  • Advanced Persistent Threat (ATP) – The breach that lasts for months
  • Successful attacks have
    • Time
    • Leaked or misused creditials
    • Miconfigured or unpatched software
  • Changing very little slowly helps all three of the above
  • A moving target is harder to hit
  • Cloud-native operability lets platforms move faster
    • Composable architecture (serverless, microservices)
    • Automated Processes (CD)
    • Collaborative Culture (DevOps)
    • Production Environment (Structured Platform)
  • The 3 Rs
    • Rotate
      • Rotate credentials every few minutes or hours
      • Credentials will leak, Humans are weak
      • “If a human being generates a password for you then you should reject it”
      • Computers should generate it, every few hours
    • Repave
      • Repave every server and application every few minutes/hours
      • Implies you have things like LBs that can handle servers adding and leaving
      • Container lifecycle
        • Built
        • Deploy
        • Run
        • Stop
        • Note: No “change “step
      • A Server that doesn’t exist isn’t being cromprimised
      • Regularly blow away running containers
      • Repave ≠ Patch
      • uptime <= 3600
    • Repair
      • Repair vulnerable runtime environments every few minutes or hours
      • What stuff will need repair?
        • Applications
        • Runtime Environments (eg rails)
        • Servers
        • Operating Systems
      • The Future of security is build pipelines
      • Try to put in credential rotation and upsteam imports into your builds
  • Embracing Change to Mitigate Risk
  • Less of a Trap (in the cloud)
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