Small, Secure, Interconnected: The next Internet Protocol

We keep building giant, centralized “one network to rule them all,” then spend years bolting on access controls, tickets, and spreadsheets. There’s an easier way: build small, human‑sized private networks that interconnect safely when you need them to. This talk shows how identity‑based networking, least‑privilege defaults, and explicit, auditable sharing let teams collaborate across companies without hair‑pin VPNs or six‑month firewall adventures. We’ll cover practical design patterns (identity as the perimeter; tags and groups, not subnets), the sharp edges you’ll hit (contractors, labs, and ghost machines), and a simple approach to cross‑organization access that you can explain to both auditors and developers. The goal is to make secure access boringly reliable and easy to revoke—so the fastest path is the secure path.