Category System Design

Introduction Microservices architectures enable scalable, flexible, and independent deployment of services, but they introduce unique security challenges due to their distributed nature. Ensuring robust security in microservices is critical for maintaining confidentiality, integrity, and availability in cloud-native applications such as…

Introduction Securing APIs is critical in cloud-native applications to protect against abuse, ensure availability, and maintain data integrity in distributed systems. Methods such as rate limiting, throttling, HMAC (Hash-based Message Authentication Code), and JWT (JSON Web Tokens) provide robust mechanisms…

Introduction Encryption is a cornerstone of cloud security, protecting sensitive data against unauthorized access, tampering, and breaches in distributed systems. It encompasses encryption in transit, which secures data as it moves across networks, and encryption at rest, which safeguards stored…

Introduction Authentication and authorization are foundational components of secure cloud-native applications, ensuring that only verified users and services access resources while adhering to least-privilege principles. Modern protocols like OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect (OIDC) provide robust mechanisms for managing identity…

Introduction Observability in cloud-native applications is a critical discipline for understanding and managing the behavior, performance, and health of distributed systems. It encompasses metrics, tracing, and logging to provide actionable insights into system operations, enabling architects to ensure high availability…

Introduction Cost optimization in cloud system design is a critical practice for maximizing the value of cloud investments while maintaining performance, scalability (e.g., 1M req/s), and high availability (e.g., 99.999% uptime). As organizations adopt cloud-native architectures for applications like e-commerce…

Introduction Cloud security is a foundational pillar of modern system design, ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data, applications, and infrastructure in cloud environments. Core components—Identity and Access Management (IAM), Secrets Management, and Key Management—provide mechanisms to control access,…

Introduction Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a cornerstone of modern system design, enabling automated, repeatable, and version-controlled management of infrastructure in cloud-native environments. Tools like Terraform and Pulumi allow architects to define infrastructure resources (e.g., compute instances, databases, networks) as…

Introduction Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines are critical components of modern system design, enabling automated, reliable, and rapid delivery of software in distributed systems. CI/CD pipelines streamline the process of building, testing, and deploying applications, ensuring high availability…