Game of Thrones fans know the Iron Bank as a lender to governments, businesses, and individuals across the known world. But Iron Bank is also the repository for digitally signed container images that are accredited for use across the US Department of Defense. Iron Bank software is accessible to anyone who registers on the Iron Bank repository.
Iron Bank software must comply with relevant Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS). Now, a FIPS-compliant version of Istio, provided and supported by Tetrate, has been accepted by the DoD and added to Iron Bank. This version of Istio is supported by the Tetrate support service, Tetrate Istio Subscription. Istio is now easily available for rapid deployment across the DoD and beyond.
The DoD is the largest organization in the world, by headcount (more than 2 million employees, civilian and military) and by budget (more than $700B per year.) About 100,000 of those 2 million employees are involved in software development and delivery. So the use of service mesh and Istio, along with Zarf (see below) and disconnected systems, by the DoD will have a large impact across the US government and beyond.