Combining Agentless and Agent-Based Cloud Security in CNAPPs

Combining Agentless and Agent-Based Cloud Security in CNAPPs

November 15, 2023 at 08:43AM

The cloud security landscape has evolved, with complex multicloud environments becoming more common and attack surfaces expanding. As a result, there is a push for contextualized security that provides visibility, prioritization, and automated alerts. The combination of agentless and agent-based protections is considered the most effective approach. Contextual cloud security posture management (CSPM) helps organizations prioritize security recommendations based on potential impact. Embracing a unified cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) facilitates collaboration among SOC analysts, security administrators, and developers for proactive security.

The meeting notes discuss how cloud security has evolved and the challenges faced by security teams in today’s complex multicloud environments. Initially, many companies turned to vendor consolidation and native tool unification, but the constant influx of security alerts overwhelmed the defenders. As a result, there is a push for contextualized security, empowering cybersecurity professionals with visibility into critical attack paths, risk-based prioritization, and automated alerts for potential cloud misconfigurations.

To achieve this contextualized security, the notes highlight the importance of embracing a unified cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) that combines agentless and agent-based protections. The debate between agentless and agent-based protection is discussed, with the suggestion that a combination of both approaches is better. Agent-based protections offer deep visibility and real-time threat protection, while agentless protections provide agility and flexibility, particularly in large-scale, complex environments. The CNAPP can adapt to an organization’s specific needs, optimizing the use of agent-based or agentless security as required.

The example of a financial service organization is given to illustrate how agentless security can safeguard sensitive data while agent-based security can detect and respond to ongoing attacks. The notes also emphasize the importance of contextualized cloud security posture management (CSPM) in helping security administrators prioritize the most important risks to remediate based on potential impact to the business. A unified CNAPP with contextualized CSPM features can enable better prioritization of security recommendations and proactively embed best practices across the enterprise. It combines capabilities in DevOps security management, cloud workload protection, cloud infrastructure entitlement management, and network security, facilitating collaboration between developers, administrators, and SOC analysts for more effective security measures.

Overall, the meeting notes highlight the need for a comprehensive and flexible approach to cloud security, combining agentless and agent-based protections, as well as contextualized security features provided by a unified CNAPP.

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