August 2019 Summaries

Falco, an open-source security tool developed by Sysdig, benefits from a vibrant community-driven development process similar to Kubernetes' special interest groups (SIGs), which enable engineers to collaborate effectively regardless of their employment status. Regular SIG calls are crucial for making decisions collectively, ensuring that every participant has a chance to contribute. Falco adopts this collaborative approach by hosting open source community calls every Wednesday, alternating between "office hours" for discussing feature work and issues, and "repository planning" for future development and roadmap planning. These calls provide opportunities for users to engage with the project, ask questions, and contribute to its development, promoting a productive and inclusive environment for the Falco community.

Sysdig Secure version 2.4 introduces a revamped policy editor that enhances user experience by integrating with Falco and providing a comprehensive library of runtime policies, which include expert-written rules and container-specific compliance standards. Users can now import numerous security rules, utilize cloud and Kubernetes metadata for scoping, and benefit from a more structured way to organize rules through tags and labels. The editor allows for easy visualization, editing, and creation of security rules, with the flexibility to address specific conditions such as container images, file system operations, and network connections. Additionally, automated remediation actions can be configured, enhancing the tool’s ability to enforce security policies across different environments. This version emphasizes productivity and usability improvements while offering new features like tightly integrated Falco rules, macros, and lists, supporting the creation of dynamic, reusable security rule groups tailored for various deployment needs.

The blog post by Mateo Burillo explains how to deploy a Kubernetes pod autoscaler using custom metrics provided by third-party monitoring services, such as Sysdig Monitor, to enhance dynamic scaling capabilities. It outlines the benefits of using the Kubernetes Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) for reliable and predictable scaling, and discusses the integration of custom metrics through the Kubernetes API using an extension service. The post also details the process of enabling the Kubernetes aggregation layer and creating APIService objects to facilitate the retrieval of custom metrics. Additionally, it highlights the use of tools like KEDA to simplify the configuration of custom metrics, allowing for the triggering of autoscalers with Prometheus and Sysdig metrics. The piece concludes by emphasizing the extensibility of Kubernetes and invites readers to engage with the project through various platforms and try out a Sysdig Monitor free trial.