Open Policy Agent (OPA) Introduction and Deep Dive

Explore the Open Policy Agent (OPA) project in this 31-minute conference talk from CNCF that provides both an introduction for newcomers and a deep dive into recent developments. Learn about OPA as a general-purpose policy engine that addresses policy-related use cases across authorization, Kubernetes, service mesh, CI/CD, and infrastructure permissions. Discover core concepts and fundamental principles that make OPA effective for policy as code implementations. Get an overview of recent changes, new features, and improvements across OPA and its broader ecosystem from current maintainers. Examine specific updates to the OPA Envoy project, including enhanced Envoy integration and improved SPIFFE identity support. Review Gatekeeper updates covering VAP integration (now beta and default), new audit violations disk export driver, and Rego v1 syntax support. Gain insights from industry practitioners at Apple, GEICO Tech, and Microsoft who share real-world implementation experiences and use cases. Understand how policy as code relates to cloud native security and discover practical applications for your own infrastructure and development workflows.