9-1-1: Cloud Native - Kubernetes For Public Safety Systems

The case study discusses the journey of the US National Capital Region’s Identity and Access Management System (IAMS) from virtual appliances to Kubernetes, and the challenges faced in building an automated system in a public safety environment.

• IAMS provides secure access to applications for first responders and public safety personnel in the DC region.
• The program's journey from running on virtual appliances to containers is covered.
• The program approached automating builds, updating dependencies, moving from stateful log management to stateless log management, and the program's move to GitOps covering how it manages multiple environments and secrets.
• Challenges faced in building an automated system in a public safety environment where there is a diverse mix of cloud native and legacy systems are discussed.

The program provides identity service for the Washington DC area that provides identity and access for regional systems and applications across 22 jurisdictions. The applications that are integrated with IMS range from content management and collaboration systems to emergency response systems. The Fairfax County Virginia emergency response system uses IMS for authentication. The entire platform is built on top of tremo Securities open Unison.

This session is a case study on using Kubernetes for the US National Capital Region’s Identity and Access Management System (IAMS), managed by Fairfax County VA. IAMS provides secure access to applications for first responders and public safety personnel in the DC region. This session will walk through IAMS’ ten year journey from “virtual appliances'', to trying docker containers, and ultimately implementing Kubernetes. The case study will cover the program’s journey and how it managed issues around automation, scalability, and cost. The case study will work through how the program approached automating builds, updating dependencies, moving from stateful log management to stateless log management and the program’s move to GitOps covering how it manages multiple environments and secrets. Finally, the case study will also address the challenges in particular to building an automated system in a public safety environment where there is a diverse mix of cloud native and legacy systems.