SPIFFE/SPIRE: cryptographic workload identity instead of static secrets
SPIFFE standardizes workload identity through short-lived SVID certificates, and SPIRE — its reference implementation — issues and rotates them via two-tier attestation (node + workload) with no pre-shared secret anywhere. We break down how it differs from external-secrets-operator, how federation works across clusters, and deploy SPIRE to fetch a real X.509-SVID for a test pod.