Ambassador Labs, leader in cloud-native developer experience, recently announced the availability of new capabilities across their Kubernetes-native solution offerings that simplify and secure develop workflows both on-premises and in cloud environments.
The new Telepresence for Docker Compose extends Telepresence’s capabilities to allow Docker Compose users to collaborate and reduce complexities as they build, debug, and route local-to-remote services for Kubernetes. Developers also gain an additional layer of security through the new Web Application Firewall (WAF) protection and adherence to PCI DSS 6.6 compliance for Ambassador Labs’ flagship API gateway, Edge Stack, which help protect externally visible web applications from malicious HTTP/S threat vectors.
“We know that building apps on Kubernetes supports the developer ability to get software to market faster due to the sheer flexibility and scalability of the open source platform, but we also know it’s a maturing technology that comes with complexities,” says Steve Rodda, CEO at Ambassador Labs. “Since our inception, we have delivered solutions built on and for Kubernetes. We are committed to the developer experience and delivering innovative tools to market that support their ability to build, test and deploy software fast and efficiently. New WAF functionality for Edge Stack shows we take security very seriously and extending Telepresence to even more Docker users allows us to reach a wider developer audience with tools to address their Kubernetes app development challenges.”
Accelerating Kubernetes Development Workflows by Reducing Friction
According to Stack Overflow’s 2023 Developer Survey, 63% of respondents spend more than 30 minutes a day finding ways to fix problems, leading to a loss of 333 to 651 hours a week across a team of 50 developers. This highlights the need for tools that improve the developer experience and reduce friction to enable them to deliver more value through app development.
Adding to the friction is the increasing rate of adoption of Kubernetes by organizations, which leads developers to take on full app lifecycle management, highlighting the importance of developer productivity. Development teams that work in dispersed locations across an organization need tools to collaborate better and streamline development stages for faster workflows. Telepresence promotes productivity and collaboration, allowing developers to ship their application into remote Kubernetes clusters with the ability to make configuration changes that can be used by any developer within the same team.
The extension of Telepresence’s capabilities to support Docker Compose comes on the heels of the recent availability of Telepresence for Docker. Millions in the community of Docker Compose developers can now easily integrate existing workflows into their local development processes and easily configure multi-container Docker applications in a productive Kubernetes development environment. This approach streamlines collaboration and productivity, resulting in faster interactions and accelerated development cycles.
Additional features of Telepresence for Docker Compose include:
- Hybrid development setup with local and remote dependencies, which allows developers to pick and choose where to run their service’s dependencies.
- Intercepting services defined in existing and unmodified Docker Compose files, which allows for a seamless adoption of Telepresence within an existing project toolchain without breaking your entire team’s workflow.
- Hot reload of Docker containers on code changes. The watch functionality of Docker Compose can be used to trigger automatic rebuilds, resulting in even faster local iterations so developers don’t need to manually rebuild containers and restart intercepts every time they make a code change.
Strengthening Application Security
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and API Gateways, which serve as the “front door” to an organization’s applications, face growing risk of exposure to external security threats and Internet-based attacks. According to a State of Kubernetes security report 2023, developers reported their top security challenges in managing application workflows across Kubernetes to be vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in container and Kubernetes environments.
The new Web Application Firewall (WAF) for Edge Stack offers developers an added layer of protection to easily monitor, filter, and block malicious HTTP/S traffic in real time to secure web applications against sophisticated threat vectors and deployment within mistrusted environments. Edge Stack also now enables teams to comply with the PCI DSS 6.6 requirement that applications are protected from known attacks and that new vulnerabilities and threats for Internet-facing web applications are constantly addressed.
Additional security benefits of Edge Stack include:
- Greater observability for malicious requests that allow operators to detect threat vectors and attacks in real time.
- Rules based on the industry standard Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10 to ensure developers meet security and compliance requirements while keeping the application stack simple and self-serviceable.
- Out-of-the-box web application protection against common threats with customizable rules and enforcement levels. This allows DevOps teams to fine tune configuration and reduce the impact of enforcing policy changes on existing applications.
