Adopting a service mesh is often driven by security compliance needs, especially for large enterprises in regulated industries. Istio, a popular service mesh platform, now offers a sidecar-less option with Istio Ambient Mesh. This new data-plane architecture enhances security while reducing complexity, cost, and overhead.

In this talk, we'll delve into the two complementary layers of Ambient: a zero-trust tunnel (ztunnel) for Layer 4 security and a waypoint proxy for Layer 7 policies and behaviors. With a live demonstration, you'll see how these components work together to revolutionize service mesh security and operations.