Show HN: Sym, define just-in-time access workflows in code Hello HN, My cofounder (jon918) and I started Sym three years ago because we were frustrated with how hard it was to manage access to cloud infrastructure. We wanted to build a tool for JIT access that was actually designed for developers. We were wary of tools that tried to accommodate both devs and IT but ended up with usability compromises for both. First, we figured no one wants another web app to log into so we let administrators define access workflows in Terraform and let developers request and gain access via Slack. That seemed to pay off: being code-based was a big plus for our early customers since it let them manage the logic in version control and test in CI/CD. Second, we knew that updating permissions/roles/access was a major source of toil and risk in the world of cloud infrastructure. Have you ever tried to avoid annoying, persistent access requests by setting policies that are a bit more permissive than you’d like? We felt that fully automated just-in-time access + approvals could really help here. But we also knew that a simple approval tool could end up leading to request fatigue - kind of defeating the purpose. So we built an SDK to let you define checks in code (e.g. pagerduty.on_call, okta.is_user_in_group, github.get_repo_collaborators) in order to dynamically route requests or fast-track access when appropriate. This seems to be paying off: users are creating Slack-based approvals in front of different types of risky actions like production access, sensitive queries and triggering Lambdas. We’d love your feedback on our approach so far. Does this make sense to you? Is this a tool you'd use? What would you want to see out of it? To learn more, check out the video that Nick (nmeans (Sym VPEng)) made [1]. You can also check out our docs [2] or set up your own flow [3]. thanks! -adam [1] https://ift.tt/Ae0qXTE [2] https://docs.symops.com [3] https://ift.tt/jLz8Mam https://symops.com/ April 6, 2023 at 08:45PM
Women Pioneers at Muni: Adeline Svendsen and Muni’s First Newsletter By Jeremy Menzies To close out Women’s History Month, here’s a look back at one woman whose work to bring Muni staff together in the late 1940s created a legacy that lives on to this day. Adeline “Addy” Svendsen was founding editor of Muni’s first internal newsletter, “ Trolley Topics .” Adeline Svendsen sits at her desk in the Geneva Carhouse office building in this 1949 shot. Trolley Topics was a new venture when it started in February 1946. As Svendsen wrote in the first issue it was created, “to bring a little fun, a little news, and a lot of good will to all our fellow employees in the Railway.” Just two years prior in 1944, Muni merged with the Market Street Railway Company, expanding the small municipal operation into the largest transit provider in the city with hundreds of employees, vehicles of every shape and size, and dozens of facilities scattered across town. The newsletter was meant to help unite ...
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