From Edge to Gateway: architecting your OpenTelemetry Collector deployment

Join us on Wednesday April 28th, for the next Elastic Warsaw User Group Meetup!
Doors open at 18.00, with snacks and drinks provided. Presentations will kick off at 18.30, and we’ll wrap up by 20.00.

Address: Brain Embassy Warsaw, Tadeusza Czackiego 15/17, Warszawa

Agenda:
18:00 Doors open
18:05 Drinks, bites and networking
18:30 Securing data in motion the right way
19:15 From Edge to Gateway: architecting your OpenTelemetry Collector deployment
20:00 Wrap up

Talks:
Securing data in motion the right way
Data streaming is powering everything from fraud detection and real-time analytics to patient monitoring and order fulfillment. But as the role of streaming grows, so does the risk - because many streaming platforms, like Apache Kafka, aren't secure by default.

In this talk, we’ll take a practical look at data streaming security through the lens of Kafka, one of the most widely adopted streaming platforms in the world. We'll walk through what can go wrong - real examples of exposing 14M patient-doctor messages, or years of real-time delivery info to the internet - and what it takes to do it right.

We'll cover the key pillars of securing a streaming system: encryption in transit and at rest, access control, monitoring, and key management. Along the way, we’ll look at the trade-offs like disk encryption vs. end-to-end encryption, what is behind field-level and envelope encryption, and the realities of using customer-managed keys in regulated industries.

We’ll also explore how monitoring extends beyond Kafka itself—into downstream systems like Elasticsearch—where logs, events, and even sensitive data are often indexed, creating both powerful detection capabilities and new security risks if left unprotected.

If you're building, running, or scaling streaming systems, this talk will help you see the security blind spots and give you concrete steps to protect the data flowing through your pipelines