Advocate - Trustworthy Evidence in Cloud Systems

The rapid evolution of cloud-native applications, characterized by dynamic, interconnected services, presents significant challenges for maintaining trustworthy and auditable systems, especially in sensitive contexts, such as finance or health-care. Traditional methods of verification and certification are often inadequate due to the fast-past and dynamic development practices common in cloud computing. This paper introduces Advocate, a novel agent-based system designed to generate attested evidence of cloud-native application operations. By integrating with existing infrastructure tools, such as Kubernetes and observability services, Advocate captures, authenticates, and stores evidence trails in a tamper-resistant manner. This approach not only supports the auditing process but also allows for privacy-preserving evidence aggregation. Advocate’s extensible architecture facilitates its deployment in diverse environments, enabling the verification and adherence to policies and enhances trust in cloud services.