Date Published: June 14, 2024
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Author(s)
Ramaswamy Chandramouli (NIST), Wesley Hales (Leak Signal)
Announcement
Cloud-native applications, which are generally based on microservices-based application architecture, involve the governance of thousands of services with as many inter-service calls. In this environment, ensuring data security involves more than simply specifying and granting authorization during service requests. It also requires a comprehensive strategy to categorize and analyze data access and leakage as data travels across various protocols (e.g., gRPC, REST-based), especially within ephemeral and scalable microservices implemented as containers.
Hence, in addition to techniques for protecting data at rest (e.g., regular expressions), it has become essential to develop in-transit data categorization that performs real-time data analysis to actively monitor and secure data as it moves across services and network protocols. This IR outlines a practical framework for effective data protection using the capabilities of WebAssembly (WASM) — a platform-agnostic, in-proxy approach with compute and traffic processing capabilities (in-line, network traffic analysis at layers 4–7) that can be built and deployed to execute at native speed in a sandboxed and fault-tolerant manner.
NOTE: A call for patent claims is included on page ii of this draft. For additional information, see the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) Patent Policy – Inclusion of Patents in ITL Publications.
This document addresses the need for effective data protection strategies in the evolving realm of cloud-native network architectures, including multi-cloud environments, service mesh networks, and hybrid infrastructures. By extending foundational data categorization concepts, it provides a framework for aligning data protection approaches with the unknowns of data in transit. Specifically, it explores service mesh architecture, leveraging and emphasizing the capabilities of WebAssembly (WASM) in ensuring robust data protection as sensitive data is transmitted through east-west and north-south communication paths.
This document addresses the need for effective data protection strategies in the evolving realm of cloud-native network architectures, including multi-cloud environments, service mesh networks, and hybrid infrastructures. By extending foundational data categorization concepts, it provides a...
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This document addresses the need for effective data protection strategies in the evolving realm of cloud-native network architectures, including multi-cloud environments, service mesh networks, and hybrid infrastructures. By extending foundational data categorization concepts, it provides a framework for aligning data protection approaches with the unknowns of data in transit. Specifically, it explores service mesh architecture, leveraging and emphasizing the capabilities of WebAssembly (WASM) in ensuring robust data protection as sensitive data is transmitted through east-west and north-south communication paths.
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Keywords
data governance; data privacy; data protection; data security; in-transit data categorization; WASM
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