Unlocking the Benefits and Trade-Offs of Agentless Cloud Security

With 87% of companies embracing multi-cloud migration and 72% selecting a hybrid cloud technique, according to Flexera’s 2023 Condition of the Cloud Report, securing cloud applications and assets has by no means been much more pressing.

The siloed nature of a hybrid cloud architecture means that cloud security is no straightforward process, and cybersecurity groups often have to prioritize security steps.

To react to a developing demand from customers, cloud security companies are giving different tools. Historically, these applications use ‘agents’ which are specialized application factors that are mounted on devices for undertaking security-connected actions like scanning and reporting, rebooting devices and making use of patches.

Solutions that customarily do the job in this way contain cloud security posture administration applications (CSPM), cloud infrastructure entitlement management engines (CIEM) and cloud workload defense platforms (CWPP) – significantly packaged with each other under the umbrella of cloud indigenous software protection platforms (CNAPP).

“The main challenge with these items is that you have to deploy an agent on every unit, which can turn out to be hard as undertaking so can clash with other departments in just your enterprise. The authorized team, for instance, could not let you deploy an agent on a method which is now been approved,” Deepinder Chhabra, board advisor at ISACA, instructed Infosecurity throughout the Cloud & Cyber Security Expo in London on March 9.

The explosion of agent-dependent cloud security remedies has even inflicted agent exhaustion on security experts, Jaime Franklin, head of world cloud resolution gross sales at Uptycs, argued throughout a Cloud & Cyber Security Expo session.

“They’re exhausted of possessing to deploy all the various agents, make sure they are in line with the DevOps pipeline, take care of them and defend how handy they are from the overhead that they have on the performance standpoint. They actually are on the lookout for a little something various,” he reported.

Read through extra: Comprehension the Shared Obligation Product, Critical Move to Make sure Cloud Security

Agentless cloud security suppliers – the likes of Cloudnosys, Orca Security, Sysdig, Cyscale, between some others – have emerged in the previous five many years to supply an option.

“Agentless answers are considerably easier to deploy, in seconds you can seize snapshots from your cloud belongings and programs on all your equipment and send them again for assessment,” Franklin defined.

Whole Visibility v Genuine-Time Examination & Prevention

On the other hand, agentless goods commonly do not supply true time security evaluation, Franklin pointed out.

“They are developed to offer you new scans every 24 several hours, so if I take a snapshot scan, it truly is likely to hold out a entire day for the following just one – unless of course I ask for an ad-hoc scan. A ton that can occur in 24 hrs. Agent-primarily based alternatives offer serious time telemetry,” he stated.

Also, agent-primarily based cloud security methods do not only offer security assessment, but precise avoidance, Franklin famous.

“An agentless CSPM, for instance, could be greater at analysing a cyber party in an open up port than an agent-based a single, for the reason that it will allow you to correlate distinctive pieces of info from several pieces of your method, but it will not be capable to remediate it, whereas an agent dependent just one will,” he discussed.

Agentless cloud security solutions have not killed the need to have for agent-based kinds, Tomer Schwartz, Dazz’s co-founder & CTO, mentioned.

“In cloud security like anyplace else, there is no silver bullet. Agentless cloud security alternatives can permit companies deploy some simple cloud security functions fast to significant workloads. They are also specifically useful for compliance uses,” Schwartz said during a session at the Cloud & Cyber Security Expo.

Franklin mentioned: “Maturity and where you are in your cloud adoption journey is key to choose involving agent and agentless solutions. A person of my buyers instructed me they wished an agentless remedy because they’re early in their cloud migration and have a skillset shortage. For them to try to control the deployment of an agent did not make sense. Agentless alternatives can assistance them start at minimum carrying out one thing to secure their cloud-dependent property and workloads,”

Chhabra concurred: “Possibly this agentless answer does not offer 100% of functionalities you ended up to begin with looking for, but at this place you are delighted with 80%.”

Having said that, organizations have to have to be extremely attentive to what they are signing up for, due to the fact the transition from an agentless to agent-centered remedy can also be pretty demanding.

“When the Log4j vulnerability broke out, some of our buyers believed their agentless cloud security software experienced prevention capacity, which it didn’t. What some did then was to lay down a second, agent-based mostly resolution together their agentless visibility device. Then you have multiple answers, user interfaces (UIs), and backends to regulate, which suggests even a lot more complexity,” he warned.

Some parts of this article are sourced from:
www.infosecurity-magazine.com