Building a Complete Zero Trust Platform

This is the capstone module. You will combine everything from the previous 11 modules into a complete, production-style zero trust platform. By the end, you will have a fully functional multi-cluster deployment with SPIRE, Envoy, OPA, and federation.

Architecture Overview

The capstone project deploys a microservice e-commerce application across two Kubernetes clusters with every service identified by SPIRE, all communication encrypted with Envoy mTLS, authorization enforced by OPA policies, cross-cluster communication via SPIFFE federation, and monitoring via Prometheus and Grafana.

What You Will Build

1. Deploy SPIRE in HA mode on both clusters
2. Configure automatic workload registration via Controller Manager
3. Deploy Envoy sidecars for transparent mTLS
4. Write and deploy OPA policies for service-to-service authorization
5. Configure federation between the two clusters
6. Deploy monitoring with SPIRE-specific dashboards
7. Test failure scenarios: what happens when identity expires? When a policy changes?

Reference Architecture

This architecture serves as a template you can adapt for your organization. The key decisions documented: trust domain naming, SPIFFE ID schema, attestation plugin choices, certificate TTL settings, policy structure, and monitoring/alerting thresholds.

Common Pitfalls

• Starting too big: Deploy SPIRE for one critical service first, then expand
• Ignoring day-two operations: Monitoring and runbooks are not optional
• Over-complicated policies: Start with broad allow rules, tighten incrementally
• Not testing failure modes: What happens when SPIRE Server is down? Test it.