Alex Olivier
Cofounder & CPO @ Cerbos
London, United Kingdom
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Alex Olivier is the CPO and Co-founder at Cerbos. As an engineer, consultant, tech lead, and product manager, he has designed enterprise solutions from the ground up, always with an eye on the developer experience. At Microsoft, Qubit, and a myriad of startups, he designed platforms that helped teams move faster at scale, with a focus on core components like authorization, data management, and security.
Alex has spoken on data and infrastructure topics at CollisionConf, Google Cloud NEXT, CogX, AI Congress amongst many others.
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Un-complicate authorization maintenance
Every application at some point needs to tackle user permissions. It may be early for some systems or much later in others, but one thing for certain is that as soon as you have more than one user type, the logic will slowly evolve into spaghetti code. And then each time you need to update it will take longer and longer to complete.
In this talk, we’ll proselytize about why decoupling authorization logic is the absolute best solution to the spaghetti code problem and other common authorization pitfalls. We'll look at real-world(ish) permissions implementations using open-source solutions. We'll try things like adding new role-based access controls to an application and evolving it to fine-grained attribute-based access controls. Along the way, we will run into typical blockers and try out ways to solve them. We'll also look at best practices for authorization (role management, policy evolution, the filtering problem, etc.) and when to just use the most obvious solution.
Large datasets and external authorization: now what?
You’ve made the leap to external authorization to manage access to your large datasets, but now you're dealing with complex policy issues. In this talk, we will demonstrate how to simplify policy management, optimize retrieval via a combination of data and authorization filters, and ensure that only permissible data are fetched. Using practical examples from a SQL database (but the approach is agnostic), we will explain how to tackle partial evaluation of policies and offload authorization logic into auditable, version-controlled statements. You will level up your database performance, increase the security of your systems, and improve the efficiency of your data retrieval.
Transforming Access Control in Modern Software Development
Join us in exploring the future of access control in our session on "Transforming Access Control." We'll dig into the quirks of traditional methods like RBAC and embrace the game-changing power of fine-grained control through ABAC. Find out how playing the field with decoupled authorization is shaking up scalability, flexibility, and security in a no-strings-attached, open-source-driven approach. Come along for some practical tips that you can throw into action right away, giving your access control strategy a boost and keeping your projects up to speed with the freshest security and efficiency standards.
What it means to be ‘Cloud Native’ in the real world
What does it actually mean in practice to be Cloud Native? Having spent the last 2 years building the open-source authorization layer Cerbos, we will cover the key software ingredients that contribute to a successful cloud-native project. Hear some of the hard-learned lessons, and the most sought-after aspects when venturing into your own cloud-native endeavours.
Modernizing Authorization: From Basic Roles to Decoupled ABAC
Authorization is a critical aspect of software development, and modernizing your approach can provide significant benefits. In this session, we will discuss how to upgrade your authorization strategy, moving from basic roles to decoupling with the open source project Cerbos.
We will start by examining the limitations of traditional role-based access control (RBAC) and explain how it can lead to security risks and maintenance challenges. We will then introduce the concept of attribute-based access control (ABAC) and explain how it can provide more fine-grained control over access to resources.
Next, we will dive deeper into decoupled authorization and its benefits in modern software development. We will discuss how it can improve scalability, flexibility, and security for your applications.
We will provide an overview of Cerbos, our authorization company, and demonstrate how it works to provide fine-grained access control. We will show how to create an authorization policy using Cerbos, which can help you implement ABAC and decoupled authorization in your applications. We will also provide a practical example of how Cerbos can be used in a real-world scenario.
Solving the never ending requirements of authorization
Implementing access controls in your application can be a never ending task as business requirements change. What begins as a simple check to see if the user’s email is from your own domain name turns into a complex web of if/else statements to determine who can do what. Coming up with a scalable, manageable and maintainable authorization process is key to meet evolving requirements as your business scales.
This talk will cover the different areas of consideration when implementing permissions, common stages in the evolution of a company where authorization needs to fundamentally change and an example of how to take a gitops based approach to scaling policy.
Layered Security: What Aviation Safety and Cheese Can Teach Us About Zero Trust
Explore the parallels between aviation safety practices and modern application security. Learn how the Swiss Cheese Model and demonstrate how a practical Zero Trust Architecture can enhance your security posture through a layered defense strategy.
Decoupling Authorization with Cerbos and WebAssembly: Empowering Flexible and Scalable Apps
In this session, we'll delve into the world of authorization in web applications and explore the game-changing concept of decoupling authorization from application code. Join us as we showcase Cerbos, an innovative solution that harnesses the power of WebAssembly (WASM) to enable authorization across various environments.
We'll begin by highlighting the significance of authorization in web applications and the challenges posed by traditional approaches. Discover how decoupling authorization from code can revolutionize the way we handle permissions, offering benefits such as simplified maintenance, cleaner code, and increased adaptability to evolving requirements.
Introducing Cerbos, our cutting-edge solution that seamlessly integrates with WebAssembly, we'll demonstrate how authorization can now occur anywhere it's needed. Whether in a React application, at the edge for rapid decision-making, on devices for IoT scenarios, or in the cloud for scalable implementations, Cerbos provides comprehensive and straightforward authorization coverage.
Join us for practical use cases that showcase the versatility of Cerbos and WebAssembly. Witness how authorization can be decoupled in a React application, empowering edge and device authorization, and enabling scalable and distributed authorization in the cloud.
To ensure a smooth implementation experience, we'll also share best practices and considerations for decoupling authorization and seamlessly integrating Cerbos with WebAssembly. Plus, we'll cover specific testing and debugging techniques tailored to this approach, giving you the tools you need to successfully implement this powerful authorization solution.
WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2024 Sessionize Event
WeAreDevelopers Live 2024 (Season 7) Sessionize Event
DeveloperWeek CloudX 2023 Sessionize Event
Civo Navigate Sessionize Event
API World 2022 Sessionize Event
DevOps & Cloud Days Sessionize Event
DeveloperWeek Europe 2022 Sessionize Event
Alex Olivier
Cofounder & CPO @ Cerbos
London, United Kingdom
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