Alan Shimel is founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Techstrong Group, a Futurum company, and a member of Futurum's executive leadership team. A technology entrepreneur, media executive and industry commentator, Shimel has spent more than three decades building businesses, communities and media platforms serving enterprise technology professionals, including co-founding StillSecure, a network security company, and the DevOps Institute, a DevOps certification and training body. At Techstrong, he leads a portfolio of media brands including DevOps.com, Security Boulevard, Cloud Native Now, Techstrong AI, Techstrong IT, Digital CxO, Platform Engineering, Techstrong Semi and Techstrong TV, along with a growing portfolio of events, educational programs and digital communities. With more than 25 years of experience in cybersecurity, Shimel is a familiar voice in the space and was an early advocate of the DevOps movement, helping bring DevOps practices into mainstream enterprise technology. His work today spans cybersecurity, DevOps, cloud-native technologies, artificial intelligence, semiconductors and digital transformation, and he hosts popular programs including Techstrong Gang, Shimmy Says and Still Cyber, After All These Years. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Politics from St. John's University and a Juris Doctor from New York Law School.

LLMs & Kubernetes Configuration: Automating Hardening, Drift Detection and Policy Enforcement

LLMs & Kubernetes Configuration: Automating Hardening, Drift Detection and Policy Enforcement

Kubernetes misconfigurations remain the top security risk. AI copilots promise automated hardening, drift detection, and policy enforcement to make clusters safer ...
| | admission controllers, AI copilots, AI in Kubernetes, cloud native security, cncf, drift detection, GitOps, KubeGuard, kubernetes, Kubernetes governance, kubernetes hardening, Kubernetes misconfiguration, Kubernetes security, Kyverno, large language models, LLMs, OPA, OpenTelemetry, platform engineering, RBAC, YAML Jenga
service mesh, Buoyant, Istio Solo.io Buoyant Linkerd service mesh

Service Mesh Evolution: Ambient Mode, Gateways & The Return of Simpler Architectures

Service mesh is evolving beyond sidecars. Ambient mode and Gateway APIs deliver security, observability, and traffic control with less overhead. Teams benefit from leaner, more flexible architectures ...
| | Alan, ambient mode, cloud native security, container networking, devops, gateway API, Istio, Kubernetes networking, microservices, observability, OpenShift Service Mesh, platform engineering, service mesh, sidecar alternatives, SRE, traffic management, waypoints, ztunnel
state, stateless, kubernetes, scanning, cloudsmith, stateless ephemeral stateful security Kubernetes unikernel Sumo Logic

Stateful Microservice Migration & the Live-State Challenge in Kubernetes

Alan argues that Kubernetes can’t ignore state any longer. While stateless apps fit the original vision, real-world workloads — from databases to AI pipelines — demand continuity. A new research framework, MS2M ...
| | AI/ML pipelines, blue/green deployment, canary releases, cloud portability, cncf, CRIU, Data Sovereignty, day-two operations, disaster recovery, forensic container checkpointing, hybrid cloud, kubernetes, live migration, MS2M, multi-cluster, platform engineering, resilience, service mesh, Stateful Workloads, stateless vs stateful
Kubernetes, observability, tracing, kubernetes observability, Grafana labs, kubernetes, observe, tool, Datadog, data, observability, kubernetes Docker Granulate observability

Bridging Observability & Security in Kubernetes: Beyond Just Metrics

Kubernetes has expanded agility but also the attack surface. Alan argues that observability and security can no longer live in silos — metrics, logs, and traces already hold critical security signals, while ...
| | anomaly detection, C2 traffic, cloud native security, convergence, cross-training, crypto-mining, devops, kubernetes, lateral movement, logs, metrics, observability, observability-driven security, OpenTelemetry, organizational silos, platform engineering, runtime security, security, SRE, tool sprawl, traces
GitOps, Red Hat, Civo Flux ,GitOps. Weaveworks Sysdig AI

GitOps at Fleet Scale: Decentralization vs. Control

Alan unpacks Red Hat’s agent-based GitOps architecture for OpenShift and what it means for scaling GitOps across fleets of Kubernetes clusters. From central control to decentralized agents, discover how balance drives the ...
| | CNCF GitOps standards, decentralized GitOps, federated GitOps model, GitOps scalability, Kubernetes GitOps scaling, OpenShift GitOps preview, Red Hat agent-based GitOps
CNCF and Docker: The Next Phase of Cloud Native Supply Chain Evolution

CNCF and Docker: The Next Phase of Cloud Native Supply Chain Evolution

The CNCF–Docker partnership strengthens cloud native supply chain security with verified namespaces, SBOMs, and signed images. Trust becomes the new baseline ...
| | cloud native security, CNCF Docker partnership, container image provenance, Docker Hub namespaces, Kubernetes trust, OSS Sponsored Program, platform engineering security, SBOM generation, signed container images, software supply chain
The Cloud-Native Frontier is at the Edge

The Cloud-Native Frontier is at the Edge

The future of cloud-native is hybrid and edge. Learn how WebAssembly (WASM) complements containers to power next-gen workloads with speed, security and agility ...
| | cloud native, cloud native security, CNCF WASM, distributed workloads, edge computing, hybrid cloud, hybrid cloud strategy, Kubernetes at the edge, WASM vs containers, WebAssembly WASM
OpenTofu, Terraform, IaC, StackGen, Argo, IaC, IaC code, AI, GenAI, Quali OutSystems Spectro Cloud IaC Kubernetes audit

OpenTofu and the New Era of Infrastructure as Code

Terraform’s license shift sparked OpenTofu’s rise. Alan explores how IaC now thrives with both HashiCorp’s Terraform and CNCF’s OpenTofu shaping the future ...
| | Business Source License BUSL, cloud infrastructure automation, cloud-native infrastructure, CNCF OpenTofu, HashiCorp license change, IaC, IaC ecosystem, IaC governance, IaC innovation, IaC strategy for enterprises, infrastructure as code, Linux Foundation, MPL to BUSL, open source IaC, OpenTofu, OpenTofu roadmap, Terraform, Terraform providers, Terraform vs OpenTofu, vendor lock-in
Supply Chain Security: Cloud Native’s Weakest Link?

Supply Chain Security: Cloud Native’s Weakest Link?

For years, the conversation in security revolved around networks, firewalls, and endpoints. The perimeter was king. But in the cloud-native era, the old perimeter has dissolved into microservices, APIs, and pipelines. What’s ...
| | cloud native, CNAPP, Log4j, SolarWinds, supply chain
visibility, runtime, eBPF Packet-Level Visibility to Workloads

Runtime Visibility: The Missing Layer in Cloud-Native Security

Cloud-native security can’t rely on old perimeter defenses. With workloads spinning up in seconds, runtime visibility is now the missing layer leaders must prioritize. Learn why observability is security, how tools like ...
| | cloud native security, cloud workload protection, CNAPP, container runtime monitoring, DevSecOps, eBPF observability, Kubernetes security, real-time anomaly detection, runtime visibility, security observability