Kuma 1.3 and Kong Mesh, built on Kuma, have released major updates introducing over ten new features and numerous enhancements aimed at optimizing service mesh deployments. Notable improvements include a fully automated Certificate Authority (CA) rotation in Kong Mesh when mutual TLS (mTLS) is enabled, which streamlines the lifecycle management of TLS and zero-trust operations without downtime. A new service map topology view provides visual insights into service traffic dependencies and metrics, available through a Grafana dashboard. Additionally, Kuma now supports mTLS in both "permissive" and "strict" modes, facilitating smoother migration of existing applications into the service mesh by allowing more flexible validation of data plane proxy certificates. Other updates include a "Virtual Outbound" policy for hostname and port customization, better support for intermediate CAs, and enhanced Server Name Indication (SNI) support for ExternalServices. Users are advised to review the Upgrade Guide carefully before proceeding with the upgrade to ensure a seamless transition.