Streaming Audio: A Confluent Podcast about Apache Kafka

Security is a primary consideration for any system design, and Apache Kafka is no exception. Out of the box, Kafka has relatively little security enabled. Rajini Sivaram (Principal Engineer, Confluent, and co-author of “Kafka: The Definitive Guide” ) discusses how Kafka has gone from a system that included no security to providing an extensible and flexible platform for any business to build a secure messaging system. She shares considerations, important best practices, and features Kafka provides to help you design a secure modern data streaming system.

How does the JDBC connection work? And what could go wrong with it? When it comes to streaming database events into Apache Kafka, the JDBC connector usually represents the first choice for its flexibility and the ability to support a wide variety of databases without requiring custom code. As an experienced data analyst, Francesco Tisiot (Senior Developer Advocate, Aiven) delves into his experience of streaming Kafka data pipeline with JDBC source connector and explains what could go wrong. He discusses alternative options available to avoid these problems, including the Debezium source connector for real-time change data capture.

Setting up a reliable cloud networking for your Apache Kafka infrastructure can be complex. There are many factors to consider—cost, security, scalability, and availability. With immense experience building cloud-native Kafka solutions on Confluent Cloud, Justin Lee (Principal Solutions Engineer, Enterprise Solutions Engineering, Confluent) and Dennis Wittekind (Customer Success Technical Architect, Customer Success Engineering, Confluent) talk about the different networking options on Confluent Cloud, including AWS Transit Gateway, AWS, and Azure Private Link, and discuss when and why you might choose one over the other.

How do the principles of chaotic, agile operations in the military apply to software development and event-driven systems? As a former Royal Marine, Ben Ford (Founder and CEO, Commando Development) is also a software developer, with many years of experience building event streaming architectures across financial services and startups. He shares principles that the military employs in chaotic conditions as well as how these can be applied to event-streaming and agile development.

Imagine you can process and analyze real-time event streams for intelligence to mitigate cyber threats or keep soldiers constantly alerted to risks and precautions they should take based on events. In this episode, Jeffrey Needham (Senior Solutions Engineer, Advanced Technology Group, Confluent) shares use cases on how Apache Kafka can be used for real-time signal processing to mitigate risk before it arises. He also explains the classic Kafka transactional processing defaults and the distinction between transactional and analytic processing.