Businesses’ use of numerous cloud services coupled with rapid software development and delivery practices is creating an explosion in potential attack surfaces — including myriad APIs, applications and data across multiple locations. Attackers are taking advantage, with eight out of the top 10 biggest data breaches in 2023 relating to applications and APIs running in the cloud.

Visibility into this complex and evolving attack surface is essential — but visibility alone won’t stop a breach. Effective cloud security requires a unified platform that provides both a holistic view of a company’s hybrid environment and the ability to quickly identify and stop threats.    

Such a platform must have the following attributes:

1. Unified capabilities that enhance risk visibility and protection across the entire estate — from application code to cloud
2. Business threat context
3. AI-driven risk prioritization and workflows
4. Runtime protection that stops breaches in real time
5. 24/7 threat hunting and intelligence
6. Managed cloud detection and response (CDR) for on-premises and cloud resources

Developing a comprehensive security posture

Raj Rajamani, head of products for global cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike, says most security platforms address one of two categories: posture management or protection.

Posture relates to visibility, or the platform’s ability to see and identify what’s important — essentially covering the first three attributes. Today, proper cloud security requires visibility into more than cloud resources alone, which cloud security posture management (CSPM) tools provide. It also requires application and data security posture management (ASPM, DSPM).

According to Rajamani, the problem is that most security platforms can see only about half of the potential attack surface in cloud environments. This is mainly because they analyze public cloud infrastructure and services, without incorporating data from private cloud and on-prem fleets and identities. In order to have effective multi-cloud security at the speed of DevOps, businesses must have visibility into both public and private cloud infrastructure, the on-prem network, as well as databases, application stacks, code and APIs, and complete protection with CDR natively built in.

Full protection requires both detection and response

Security tools historically tend to specialize in one area, forcing organizations to adopt several point products when they face new security needs and challenges. This causes problems when there are numerous tools to monitor and too many threats to evaluate with too little context. Making matters more complicated, some cloud security tools don’t deliver on the capabilities they promise. Many CNAPPs, for example, are thinly veiled CSPM tools built to provide cloud vulnerability management but lack the ability to stop cloud breaches.

When you’re trying to view and block threats in an increasingly complex environment, you don’t need multiple tools alerting you to issues without the context needed to prioritize them. What’s needed to secure your cloud estate is the ability to prioritize threats, identify those that demand immediate attention and stop threat actors in their tracks. Detection and response are essential to strong cloud protection. 

CrowdStrike stops threats in real time with advanced runtime protection built on the same unified agent as its pioneering endpoint detection and response (EDR) and identity protection. Leveraging world-class managed threat hunting and intelligence, CrowdStrike sets the standard for CDR as a native part of the only truly complete cloud security platform. This combination of best-in-class technology built to stop the breach and human expertise speeds detection and response across every stage of a cloud attack, even as threats move laterally from cloud to endpoint.

“Visibility of cloud vulnerabilities alone does not stop breaches,” says Rajamani. “Only CrowdStrike delivers visibility, prevention and remediation across the entire cloud estate in a unified platform to stop cloud breaches.”

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