Platform engineers are constantly challenged with streamlining application deployments while maintaining robust security. This session dives deep into leveraging automation and zero-trust principles to achieve both goals.

We'll explore how automated deployment of CI/CD and security tooling in a kubernetes DevOps cluster running on Google Cloud Platform reduced the time taken for the whole application deployment process 70%. We'll also look at the concept of zero trust and its application in securing the deployment pipeline. We'll demonstrate how to leverage open-source tools like ArgoCD and Kustomize to automate deployments with least privilege access across the entire CI/CD chain. Additionally, the talk will cover integrating security scanning tools within the pipeline for early detection and mitigation of vulnerabilities.