Every developer who has tried simple encryption with XOR and hardcoded keys eventually faces the audit that exposes their house of cards.
I’ve watched production systems fail compliance assessments because someone believed base64 encoding was good enough or that compilation obscures secrets.
The .NET Data Protection API exists precisely because Microsoft’s cryptography team spent years solving problems most developers don’t know they have.
This isn’t about learning yet another library—it’s about understanding why professional implementations outperform clever hacks, and how Azure Key Vault integration transforms theoretical security into auditable compliance.
Stateful workloads in Kubernetes require understanding PersistentVolume architecture, Azure storage trade-offs, and backup strategies. This article covers PVC/PV patterns, Azure Disk vs Files performance profiles, Velero backup configurations, and multi-cluster replication patterns based on production experience.
Hardcoded secrets aren’t just bad practice—they’re ISO 27017 violations with real consequences: failed audits, denied insurance claims, contractual penalties. That connection string in your appsettings.Production.json? It represents a compliance gap your organization probably doesn’t even know exists. Azure Key Vault with Managed Identity isn’t an optional security enhancement—it’s the minimum viable implementation of standards you already claim to follow.
Your audit logs probably won’t survive a real security incident. Most implementations log too much, protect too little, and provide zero value when something breaks at 2 AM. Here’s how to fix that with structured logging that actually works.
AKS cluster upgrades involve node replacement and pod eviction, which can cause service disruption without proper controls. This article explains cordon and drain mechanics, Pod Disruption Budget configuration, and multi-node-pool rollout strategies with validation-driven automation for reliable zero-downtime upgrades.
