Open-source project providing eBPF-based networking, security, and observability for cloud native environments.
Founded
2015
Cilium is an open-source project that provides networking, security, and observability for cloud native environments such as Kubernetes clusters, using an eBPF-based data plane. It offers a flat Layer 3 network spanning multiple clusters, replaces kube-proxy, and adds load balancing, transparent encryption, identity-based network policy, and a sidecar-free service mesh. Hubble provides flow observability and Tetragon provides security observability and runtime enforcement as related sub-projects.
Originally created by engineers who later founded Isovalent, the project was accepted into the Cloud Native Computing Foundation at incubating level in October 2021 and graduated in October 2023. Cilium runs as the container network interface in managed Kubernetes offerings including Google GKE Dataplane V2, Amazon EKS Anywhere, and Azure CNI powered by Cilium, and is maintained by a distributed community of contributors.
