researchHQ’s Key Takeaways:
- Cloud complexity makes proactive threat detection a crucial component within an enterprise’s cloud security posture management (CSPM) strategy.
- An effective threat detection tool could reduce configuration errors by as much as 73% and alert volume by as much as 83%.
- Successful CSPM tools are composed of high fidelity threat intelligence, strong network threat detection abilities, network anomaly monitoring and user entity behaviour analytics.
The market has largely assimilated cloud security posture management (CSPM) tools for just three security functions:
- Visibility into runtime
- Configuration management
- Managing compliance
While these are important for maintaining adequate security hygiene and reducing risk in cloud environments (along with minimizing runtime configuration errors through shift left strategies), they only represent one part of an effective strategy.
I’ll explain why threat detection is an essential addition to that strategy and show how Prisma Cloud is the only CSPM tool that can address it.
What Your Cloud Security Posture Management Tool is Missing
According to the IBM Data Breach Report 2020, it takes organizations, on average, 280 days to discover and contain a breach. Considering how essential the cloud has become for businesses, and how quickly it evolves, 280 days is more than enough time to cause significant damage.
Focusing on maintaining hygiene through compliance and configuration management, without monitoring for new threats, leaves organizations completely exposed. It’s like spending time making sure the doors are locked without considering putting up security cameras. After all, there is no such thing as “perfect” protection, and a malicious actor just needs one loophole to exploit.
Given the added complexities of the cloud (accelerated development pace, distributed environments, diversity in microservices, constantly changing network activities) proactive threat detection must be a component of a comprehensive CSPM strategy. As more and more users and workloads are added to cloud environments, continuously monitoring behavior for suspicious activities is critical. This means a combination of static rule and machine-learning-based security policies; as well as user activity monitoring.
4 Components of Threat Detection in CSPM
Let’s take a look at four ways Prisma Cloud quickly detects risks and prevents incidents across cloud environments.
- High Fidelity Threat IntelligenceThere are numerous threat detection solutions on the market today. But a tool’s ability to effectively identify and surface risks is only as good as its data source. For many solutions, this means a disparate assortment of cloud service provider (CSP) logs and open-source feeds.
Prisma Cloud delivers high-fidelity threat intelligence sourced from AutoFocus – a massive repository of network, endpoint and cloud intelligence data – that helps detect cryptomining, ransomware, Linux malware, backdoor malware, hacking tools and more. In addition, our own curation of 30-plus upstream data sources across commercial, open-source and proprietary feeds helps to provide accurate and granular risk context across multi-cloud environments.
