In November 2025, Laz focused on enhancing backward compatibility for gRPC TLS certificate providers across the istio/istio and grpc/grpc-java repositories. Laz implemented updates in Go and Java to ensure Istiod could handle both current and deprecated xDS TLS certificate provider fields, addressing validation failures in newer and older gRPC clients. The work included adding fallback logic and expanded test coverage, improving reliability for proxyless deployments and supporting a broader range of Envoy and Java environments. By coordinating changes across repositories, Laz reduced deployment risks and reinforced interoperability, demonstrating depth in backend development, TLS, and gRPC protocol integration.