The relationship between identification and response (DR) methodologies and cloud safety has historically been fragile. As companies worldwide increasingly embrace cloud surroundings, safety methods have largely focused on “shift-left” methodologies- securing code, guaranteeing proper cloud stance, and rectifying misconfigurations. However, this tactic has resulted in a significant dependence on a myriad of DR utilities extending over cloud framework, workloads, and even applications. Even with these cutting-edge utilities, companies frequently take weeks or even months to pinpoint and rectify incidents.
In addition to this, the obstacles of tool proliferation, escalating cloud security expenses, and overwhelming amounts of false positives, it becomes evident that security teams are under immense pressure. Many are compelled to make tough choices regarding which cloud infringements they can feasibly safeguard against.
By adhering to these five precise actions, security teams can significantly enhance their live identification and response capabilities for cloud assaults.
Step 1: Incorporate Runtime Observation and Safeguard
When security teams lack the real-time visibility, they are essentially operating in the dark, incapable of responding efficiently to threats. While cloud-native surveillance tools, container security solutions, and EDR systems render useful insights, they are inclined to concentrate on particular tiers of the setting. A more holistic strategy is attained by leveraging eBPF (Extended Berkeley Packet Filter) sensors. eBPF allows profound, real-time observability over the complete stack- network, framework, workloads, and applications- without disturbing production surroundings. By functioning at the kernel level, it provides visibility without attaching performance overhead, establishing it as a robust solution for runtime safety.
Here are some fundamental capabilities to utilize for this stage:
- Topology Graphs: Illustrates how hybrid or multi-cloud assets communicate and interlink.
- Comprehensive Asset Visibility: Exhibits every asset within the environment, comprising clusters, networks, databases, secrets, and operating systems, all in one place.
- External Connectivity Insights: Pinpoints connections to external entities, encompassing specifics about the country of origin and DNS information.
- Risk Evaluations: Evaluate the level of risk of each asset, in conjunction with its effect on the business.
Step 2: Employ a multi-tiered identification approach
As perpetrators continue to evolve and circumvent identification, it becomes more challenging to pinpoint and halt breaches prior to their occurrence. The most significant hurdle in achieving this lies in identifying cloud assault endeavors where antagonists are discreet and exploit numerous assault surfaces— from network exploitation to data insertion within a managed service — all the while eluding detection by cloud identification and response (CDR), cloud workload identification and response (CWPP/EDR), and application identification and response (ADR) platforms. This fragmented approach has been inadequate, enabling assailants to exploit voids between tiers to elude detection.
Tracking cloud, workloads, and application tiers in a unified platform delivers the broadest coverage and protection. It facilitates correlating application behavior with infrastructure modifications instantly, guaranteeing assaults no longer escape notice.
Here are some primary capabilities to leverage for this stage:
- Complete-Stack Detection: Identifies occurrences from multiple origins across the cloud, applications, workloads, networks, and APIs.
- Irregularity Detection: Utilizes AI and behavioral assessment to identify deviations from regular activity patterns that might indicate a menace.
- Identifies Established and Unknown Threats: Pinpoints incidents in alignment with signatures, IoCs, TTPs, and MITRE recognized tactics.
- Incident Association: Correlates security occurrences and warnings across diverse origins to identify trends and probable threats.
Commence with multi-tiered identification and responsetoday.
Step 3: Examine vulnerabilities within the same pane as your incidents
When vulnerabilities are separated from incident data, there is an increased risk of delayed responses and oversight. This occurs because security teams lack the necessary context to grasp how vulnerabilities are being exploited or the criticality of patching them in relation to ongoing incidents.
Furthermore, when detection and response efforts make use of runtime monitoring (as elucidated above), vulnerability management becomes significantly more efficient, concentrating on active and critical risks to diminish noise by over 90%.
Here are some crucial capabilities to utilize for this step:
- Risk Prioritization – Assesses vulnerabilities based on critical factors—such as whether they are loaded into the application’s memory, are executed, public-facing, exploitable, or fixable—to prioritize actual threats.
- Root Cause Discovery – Identifies the root cause for each vulnerability (down to the image layer) to address the root promptly and resolve multiple vulnerabilities simultaneously.
- Validation of Fixes – Employs ad-hoc scanning of images before deployment to ensure all vulnerabilities have been rectified.
- Regulation Adherence – Enumerates all active vulnerabilities as an SBOM to conform to compliance and regional regulations.
Step 4: Integrate identities to comprehend the “who”, “when”, and “how”
Threat actors frequently exploit compromised credentials to carry out their attacks, engaging in activities like credential theft and account takeovers. This enables them to impersonate legitimate users within the environment and evade detection for extended periods. Detecting this impersonation is crucial, and establishing a baseline for each identity, be it human or otherwise, is the most effective way to do so. Once the typical access pattern of an identity is understood, recognizing unusual behavior becomes straightforward.
Here are some essential capabilities to employ for this step:
- Baseline Monitoring: Deploys monitoring tools that capture and analyze baseline behavior for both users and applications. These tools should monitor access patterns, resource usage, and interactions with data.
- Human Identities Security: Integrates with identity providers to gain visibility into human identity usage, including login times, locations, devices, and behaviors, enabling prompt detection of unusual or unauthorized access attempts.
- Non-Human Identities Security: Tracks the utilization of non-human identities, providing insights into their interactions with cloud resources and highlighting any irregularities that may indicate a security risk.
- Secrets Security: Identifies every secret across your cloud environment, tracks their runtime usage, and indicates whether they are securely managed or at risk of exposure.
Step 5: Possess a variety of response actions ready for contextual intervention
Each breach attempt presents unique challenges that must be overcome, underscoring the importance of having a flexible response strategy tailored to the specific circumstances. For instance, an attacker might deploy a malicious process necessitating immediate termination, while a different cloud event might involve a compromised workload requiring quarantine to avert further harm. Following the detection of an incident, security teams also need context to expedite investigation, including comprehensive attack narratives, damage assessments, and response playbooks.
Here are some key capabilities to employ for this step:
- Playbooks: Provide detailed responses for each detected incident to intervene confidently and eliminate the threat.
- Tailored Attack Intervention: Enable the isolation of compromised workloads, blocking unauthorized network traffic, or terminating malicious processes.
- Root Cause Analysis: Identify the primary cause of the incident to prevent reoccurrence. This entails analyzing the attack vector, exploited vulnerabilities, and weaknesses in defenses.
- Integration with SIEM: Integrate with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems to enhance threat detection with contextual data.
By implementing these five steps, security teams can enhance their detection and response capabilities, effectively thwarting cloud breaches in real-time with absolute precision. The moment to take action is now – Commence today with Sweet Security.
About Author
