Cloud-native applications make heavy use of services and microservice architectures. Distributed applications provide many benefits to modern application development processes and lend themselves particularly well to applications deployed in the public cloud.
But microservices can also create additional and unwanted vulnerability points that bad actors can leverage to compromise your application. A single compromised service, no matter how small, can lead to vulnerabilities that can be exploited in neighboring services, ultimately compromising them as well. A single small service can be the entry point to a massive attack that compromises your entire application.
Even if your services are in a private network—behind a cloud firewall—they should not assume the network is safe. Services within the application can still be compromised. And, like the infamous Greek Trojan Horse, a compromised service in an otherwise secure network can cause untold damage to your application.
There are many things you can do to keep your service and microservice-based application safe and secure. But two critical and often overlooked security strategies are absolutely necessary.