Automated Authorization Policy Generation for Service Mesh Security
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Establishing secure authorization policies for interrelated services in a service mesh is time-consuming and error-prone, requiring in-depth knowledge of service communications and manual entry of potentially hundreds of policies.
Innovation Solution
Automated authorization policy creation through recording and analyzing request records during a trust period to determine which services communicate with each other, generating policies that permit requests only from authorized services, thereby eliminating the need for manual entry and deep understanding of service communications.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If manual entry of authorization policies is used, then policies can be created with full control and understanding, but the process is time-consuming and error-prone
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs self-service by automatically generating authorization policies through observing and analyzing service communications. The authorization management system monitors service-to-service requests, identifies communication patterns, and autonomously creates appropriate authorization policies without requiring manual configuration, thereby eliminating time-consuming manual entry while maintaining accuracy through systematic analysis
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback by continuously monitoring actual service communications and using this information to generate and refine authorization policies. The authorization management system observes real request patterns between services, analyzes the communication behavior, and automatically adjusts policies based on this feedback loop, ensuring both accuracy and efficiency
2Loss of information
If manual creation of authorization policies is performed, then deep understanding of service communications is achieved, but the complexity and error rate increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces an intermediary mechanism that automatically analyzes service communications and translates them into authorization policies. This intermediary layer observes the complex service-to-service interactions, processes the communication patterns, and generates simplified authorization rules, thereby preserving understanding of service communications while reducing the complexity and error rate of manual policy creation
3Reliability
If hundreds of authorization policies are manually configured, then comprehensive security coverage is achieved, but the error rate and time consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The authorization management system performs self-service by automatically generating comprehensive authorization policies through systematic observation of service communications. It monitors all service-to-service requests, identifies communication patterns across the entire service mesh, and autonomously creates the necessary authorization policies, achieving both comprehensive security coverage and high productivity by eliminating manual configuration of hundreds of policies
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements a universal approach by creating a single authorization management mechanism that handles all authorization policy generation across multiple services. This multi-functional system observes communications between any services, analyzes patterns universally, and generates appropriate policies for all service pairs, achieving comprehensive security coverage while significantly improving productivity through automation
Data Source
AI summary
Automated authorization policy creation for interrelated services is disclosed. A plurality of request records is obtained, each request record corresponding to a request sent from a sending service of a plurality of services to a receiving service of the plurality of services, and each request record identifying the sending service and the receiving service, wherein the plurality of services comprises a plurality of interrelated services. A first subset of the request records is determined wherein a service of the plurality of services sent a request to a first service. A first subset of services is determined based on the first subset of request records. The generation of an authorization policy is caused that permits requests to the first service from only those services in the first subset of services.