Upbound at KCD Helsinki 2025: Securing the Cloud-Native Future, One Talk at a Time

On May 6, 2025, the cloud-native community will come together in Helsinki for a sold-out Kubernetes Community Day (KCD) Helsinki 2025, a one-day, in-person technical event hosted by Cloud Native Finland and supported by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). This community-powered gathering provides a unique opportunity for practitioners, developers, and leaders to connect, share ideas, and showcase innovative solutions that are shaping the cloud-native landscape.

We’re thrilled to announce that two Upbound team members will be speaking at KCD Helsinki, sharing insights on access control and air-gapped control planes—two timely topics for organizations operating in regulated or large-scale environments.

Speaker Highlights:

Lightning Talk: "Towards Safe, Fast and Formally Verified Access Control"
Speakers: Lucas Käldström, Staff Software Engineer at Upbound & Cloud Native Finland Organizer
Room 1 — May 6 at 17:20 – 17:25 (Helsinki time)
Access control isn’t just a checkbox—it’s foundational to security, privacy, and business resilience. In this fast-paced lightning talk, Lucas dives into the mathematical formalization of access control using Cedar Policy, enabling safe policy changes and system interoperability. Discover how formal verification can help ensure that access controls are secure and auditable — even across disparate systems.

Session: "Building Air-Gapped Control Planes for a Global Pharma Leader Using Crossplane and ArgoCD"
Speakers: Yury Tsarev, Principal Solutions Architect at Upbound and Juan González, Lead Platform Engineer at Novo Nordisk
Main Track — May 6 at 11:30 – 12:00 (Helsinki time)
What happens when you combine GitOps, Crossplane, and a mission-critical pharmaceutical environment? Yury and Juan will share how Novo Nordisk built a fully air-gapped control plane — overcoming security and compliance hurdles using open-source tooling and declarative infrastructure. Expect practical lessons and real-world architecture insights for managing Kubernetes at enterprise scale.
We can’t wait to see you at KCD Helsinki 2025. Come learn, share, and connect with fellow cloud-native technologists—and don’t miss the Upbound sessions!