Confluent Platform 5.3 is now available, offering several key features to simplify Kafka operations, automation of deployment and lifecycle operations on Kubernetes, and enhanced security through the introduction of Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). The platform aims to provide a complete set of software interfaces, including a redesigned user interface for Confluent Control Center, a new CLI, and automated deployments using Confluent Operator and Ansible Playbooks. Additionally, Confluent Platform 5.3 introduces features such as Secret Protection, which encrypts secrets within configuration files, and support for cloud-native operational models on Kubernetes. The platform is built on the latest version of Apache Kafka (2.3) and provides a comprehensive security strategy to ensure access to resources in a way that is simple enough to reason about yet flexible enough to implement organization's security policies with precision.