Mark Robinson

Staff Infrastructure Engineer

Plaid

Roadblock title:

Outages and oopsies: A look at doing TLS/mTLS wrong and how to do it right

Time:

Thursday - 1:00 PM (5th floor - Manchester F)

Abstract:

In the ever-evolving world of cybersecurity, Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Mutual TLS (mTLS) have become essential for secure communication. However, improper implementation and configuration can lead to a cascade of issues, ranging from frustrated engineers to service outages and full-blown security breaches.

This talk takes a lighthearted approach to a serious topic, using real-world examples and relatable anecdotes to explore the most common pitfalls associated with TLS/mTLS deployments. We’ll delve into certificate misconfigurations, deployment mistakes, and other oopsies that can leave your infrastructure team scrambling and your users frustrated. More importantly, we’ll cover how to do TLS/mTLS right to maximize security and minimize maintenance burden.

Bio:

Mark is a passionate engineer who loves to solve hard problems. He is an infrastructure engineer at Plaid, a financial data network, where he works at solving scaling issues around deploying software, and keeping the infrastructure running. He specifically enjoys focusing on CICD pipelines, metrics and monitoring, and developer optimization. In his spare time, Mark rehabilitates under-socialized kittens, renovates his heritage house, and makes Jeff Bezos cry by reducing AWS spend.