Federate, Scale, and Secure - Practical SPIFFE/SPIRE for Containers, VMs, and Real-World Infrastructure

Explore real-world implementation patterns for SPIFFE and SPIRE to establish secure workload identities across diverse infrastructure environments in this 19-minute lightning talk from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon. Learn how SPIFFE/SPIRE serves as the foundation for modern identity-based security, replacing traditional perimeter-based approaches across Kubernetes clusters, legacy virtual machines, and hybrid cloud environments. Discover how SPIRE integrates with orchestration platforms to issue SPIFFE IDs through both X.509 and JWT-SVIDs, understanding the specific tradeoffs and optimal use cases for each format. Master scaling strategies using SPIRE's nested architecture to handle enterprise-level deployments while maintaining high availability across distributed systems. Understand federation techniques that extend trust boundaries seamlessly between cloud and on-premises environments, enabling consistent security policies regardless of infrastructure location. Gain practical insights into operational considerations for deploying workload identity solutions that support platform-independent authentication and authorization across containers, virtual machines, and complex hybrid infrastructures.