November 18, 2020

What are the best practices to be followed for microservices security?

One of the best providers for continuous delivery, Microservices, ensures reduced downtime for users, minimal disruption, and rapid updates. Through microservices, organizations can adapt quickly and better to evolving market conditions and allows faster updates.

When it comes to innovation, microservices often offer an edge as developers can experiment freely with applications that help build enhanced software products.

Hence, an extremely beneficial architecture style to developers, operation providers, and architects is to address technical, functional, and business issues.

While leveraging microservice architecture benefits are numerous, the downside is the security threat due to decentralized development and details storage in terms of login credentials.

Hence, here are some best practices to be followed for maintaining a secure environment while leveraging microservices:

API gateway is key

One of the most crucial aspects of microservices applications is the points of authorization which face the highest threat. An excellent way to secure your application is to use API gateways, which offer a solo entry point, and during login, it asks for permission to store cookies. The app stores the credentials and, on the next login, loads from the cache memory and not the server.

Rock-solid defense strategy

It is important to identify and assess your highly sensitive services and apply various security layers to them for protection from a hacker. A good example could be an online shopping app or website whose most sensitive areas would the payment section and the user’s profile information. Since microservices architecture offers various avenues, the requirement is to add numerous security layers to the sensitive zones in question, ensuring that a hacker is faced with back-to-back security layers to crack if he/she cracks the first one.

Adding individual security layers creates a multi-dimensional cybersecurity approach that implies heightened protection and security while avoiding redundancy.

 

Go the DevSecOps way

A great way to improve security is for your development and operations team to work In sync with the security team, which has been termed DevSecOps. In this, the DevOps team involves the security team for coming up with the app’s architecture instead of doing a consultation post the app going live. Hence, this team follows standard practices and measures to ensure the code stays secure while in the initial development stage itself.

Post-deployment, experts do a thorough review of finding security loopholes and weak points. Another highlight of the DevSecOps is the automation of code review and app monitoring to prevent any compromises or malicious access.

By taking a fair assessment of various issues around microservices security, it is essential to innovate for devising a smart security solution and tools for optimum security for your app.