Microservices have become a popular software development technique in recent years. Breaking down applications into distinct sets of loosely coupled smaller services helps organizations port workloads from cloud to cloud and get better utilization out of the resources they’re paying for. But there are challenges associated with the practice, starting with security. Microservices can make security much more costly – if you’re not careful.

We discuss why microservices put such a heavy load on verifications of credentials and make it harder to manage access to specific services. We go through some solutions companies can pursue to mitigate the impact of having to verify identities for so many tiny jobs. One way is to shift to security tokens that have fixed or limited lifetimes.

We also talk about tasks organizations continue to struggle with as they ramp up their cloud projects. Some aren’t going “cloud native” enough, sticking with on-premises resources rather than leveraging the cloud services that are available. Others are taking too long to embrace automation.

Finally, our panel shares some thoughts about tech trends people might talk about in the coming year – everything from more strategic use of AI and ML to GDPR enforcements that push enterprises to pay closer attention to privacy rules.