Jetstack Helps Enterprises Secure The Software Supply Chain | Matthew Bates

TFIR: Open Source, Cloud Native & AI/ML

Jetstack helps businesses to build and operate cloud-native infrastructure with Kubernetes. The company was formed back in 2015, just a year after the Kubernetes open source project was started. Matthew Bates, CTO of Jetstack, sits down with Swapnil Bhartiya in this episode of Let’s Talk from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU to introduce the company and its mission. Jetstack recently released a comprehensive toolkit to help development and security teams secure the software supply chain. Bates feels that this is something we need to take seriously and people need to be made aware of the sophistication of the risks in the attacks they are seeing. He discusses what Jetstack is doing to provide a digestible means to better understand this topic. On discussing why he thought Kubernetes was such a game changer when it was first released, Bates says, “We felt that this presented a really interesting opportunity to be able to build those systems, and also for enterprises to rethink the way that they develop, build and ship software as well. We thought it was the start of a real shift.” Besides the opportunities Kubernetes brings, Bates gives some insights into the challenges enterprises face as they try to navigate Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies. One of those challenges, security, continues to be a critical factor to handle. However, Bates feels that security is increasingly being made a priority earlier in the life cycle. Key highlights from this video interview are: Bates describes what motivated him to form Jetstack and how the introduction of Kubernetes presented many opportunities for building complex, potentially stateful systems. He discusses what challenges enterprises faced as they looked to understand and embrace the new technology and how Jetstack has been helping. Bates explains that Jetstack is an advisory and a product company. He goes into depth about the customers they are helping, particularly with very large banks and how Jetstack is helping them understand the challenges and the breadth of the tools in The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) to help address them. The cloud-native ecosystem is evolving, which compared to traditional IT is considerably more complex. Bates discusses the evolution over time they have seen in people consuming Kubernetes and how the ecosystem is maturing. Security continues to be a critical consideration for cloud with zero-trust remaining complicated to implement. Bates feels that DevSecOps is prioritizing security rather than it being an afterthought. He explains the benefits Kubernetes brings for having the ability to have security built into the platform.