HashiCorp Consul on Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) version 0.5 is now generally available, adding support for AWS IAM authentication and mesh gateways. This release enables services to communicate across multiple runtimes and clouds, reducing risk by enforcing consistent end-to-end security for service communication. The new authentication method allows using AWS IAM identities for authenticating to Consul to receive Consul ACL tokens, eliminating the need for polling and storing tokens in AWS Secrets Manager. Mesh gateways are also supported, enabling cross-datacenter or cross-partition communication over a WAN, and reducing risk by enforcing consistent end-to-end security for service communication. The configuration process involves using Terraform modules, such as `acl_controller` and `mesh-task`, to deploy the Consul service mesh and configure mesh gateways on ECS.