# From SSH to REST: A Security-Driven Modernization of Slack's EMR Data Pipelines

DevFeed: [From SSH to REST: A Security-Driven Modernization of Slack's EMR Data Pipelines](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/from-ssh-to-rest-a-security-driven-modernization-of-slack-s-emr-data-pipelines-146.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://slack.engineering/from-ssh-to-rest-a-security-driven-modernization-of-slacks-emr-data-pipelines/>)

Author: Mahendran Vasagam

Published: 2026-05-05T14:00:01Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Engineering at Slack](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/engineering-at-slack.md>)

Topics: [Security](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/security.md>), [OpenSSH](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/openssh.md>), [Amazon Web Services](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/aws.md>), [airflow](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/airflow.md>), [DataOps](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/dataops.md>), [Architecture & Design](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/architecture-design.md>), [Kubernetes](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/kubernetes.md>)

Tags: [airflow](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/airflow.md>), [architecture](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/architecture.md>), [aws](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/aws.md>), [big-data](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/big-data.md>), [data-analytics](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/data-analytics.md>), [data-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/data-engineering.md>), [data-infrastructure](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/data-infrastructure.md>), [kubernetes](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/kubernetes.md>), [modernization](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/modernization.md>), [security](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/security.md>), [ssh](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ssh.md>), [uncategorized](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/uncategorized.md>)

## AI overview

Slack describes migrating more than 700 SSH-based data pipeline jobs to a REST-based architecture across eight data regions, eliminating SSH access to production AWS EMR clusters without downtime. The article explains the security and operational problems that motivated the modernization, including attack-surface exposure, key-management overhead, resource contention, broken connections, zombie jobs, and unreliable job-status detection.

## Source excerpt

Excerpt By 2024, Slack's data platform had accumulated 700+ SSH-based operators orchestrating critical data pipelines. We're talking daily search indexing that processed terabytes of data, analytics jobs powering business intelligence, the whole shebang. Every single one of these jobs required direct SSH access to production AWS Elastic MapReduce (EMR) clusters. We had a massive security...