Attribute-based policies through microservices in a smart home scenario

Application containerization allows for efficient resource utilization and improved performance when compared to traditional virtualization techniques. However, managing multiple containers and providing services such as load balancing, fault tolerance and security represent challenging tasks in the emerging microservices architectures. In this context, Kubernetes platform allows to build resilient distributed containers. Besides its efficiency in terms of configuration and architectural resiliency, it must also guarantee the access control to the managed resources. In fact, information must be protected throughout the different microservices which compose an application. To cope with such an issue, this paper proposes the definition of attribute-based policies able to regulate data disclosure within a Kubernetes-based microservices network. Simulations are carried out in a local Minikube environment, considering a smart residence scenario. The investigated metrics include response time, required memory, CPU load, and disk usage.