As enterprises transition to cloud-native architectures, microservices have become a dominant pattern for building scalable and modular applications. SAP Kyma, built on Kubernetes, supports microservices development and orchestration. However, with distributed services communicating across the network, security becomes a critical concern.
To address this, SAP Kyma integrates Istio, a powerful open-source service mesh, which provides comprehensive security features out-of-the-box. This article explores how to secure microservices in SAP Kyma using Istio’s capabilities, ensuring data protection, access control, and observability in SAP environments.
Istio operates as a transparent infrastructure layer, managing service-to-service communication without requiring changes to application code. Key Istio security features include:
In SAP Kyma, Istio ensures secure microservice interactions while maintaining performance and scalability.
Mutual TLS encrypts all service-to-service traffic and verifies identities automatically.
kyma-system namespace.kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: "security.istio.io/v1beta1"
kind: "PeerAuthentication"
metadata:
name: "default"
namespace: "your-namespace"
spec:
mtls:
mode: STRICT
EOF
This enforces encryption and authentication between all services in the namespace.
Istio’s authorization policies allow you to specify which microservices can communicate:
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
name: allow-only-specific-service
namespace: your-namespace
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
app: target-service
rules:
- from:
- source:
principals: ["cluster.local/ns/your-namespace/sa/source-service-account"]
This policy restricts access to target-service to only the specified source service account.
Use Istio Gateway to expose APIs securely:
apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1beta1
kind: RequestAuthentication
metadata:
name: jwt-auth
namespace: your-namespace
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
app: your-api
jwtRules:
- issuer: "https://issuer.example.com"
jwksUri: "https://issuer.example.com/.well-known/jwks.json"
Combine with an AuthorizationPolicy to enforce authenticated access.
Leverage Istio’s telemetry with tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and Kiali integrated in Kyma to:
Securing microservices is essential for maintaining the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of SAP Kyma applications. Istio’s service mesh capabilities provide a robust, transparent security layer that protects service communication and enforces access control without burdening developers.
By leveraging Istio’s security features, SAP Kyma users can confidently build and operate secure, scalable microservices architectures that comply with enterprise-grade security standards.