In today’s rapidly evolving cloud environments, maintaining a robust security posture is more critical than ever. Traditional Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions have played a pivotal role in identifying misconfigurations and policy violations within cloud infrastructures. However, as cloud architectures become increasingly dynamic, the sheer volume of misconfiguration findings can present an insurmountable challenge for security teams. To solve this problem, Upwind’s posture solution goes beyond traditional CSPM offerings, by integrating runtime context, which helps security teams distinguish between theoretical and active threats, prioritize misconfigurations based on real-world impact, and streamline remediation efforts for increased operational efficiency.
Understanding Traditional CSPM
Traditional CSPM solutions focus on assessing cloud configurations against established security policies and best practices. For example, they might detect overly permissive IAM roles that allow unrestricted access to critical resources, publicly exposed storage buckets, or unencrypted database instances. They identify misconfigurations, policy violations, and potential risks with static scans, acting as the urban planning committee of cloud security by setting and enforcing zoning laws and regulations to prevent hazards.
While this approach is a foundational first step, it often results in an overwhelming number of alerts, making it challenging for security teams to prioritize which issues require immediate attention. Without contextual information about the actual runtime environment, teams often struggle to differentiate between theoretical and immediate risks. For example, a machine with a known vulnerability but no internet ingress or egress may pose minimal risk. In contrast, a machine that processes sensitive data and is exposed to the internet with an actively exploited vulnerability represents an urgent security threat.
The Need for Runtime Context in CSPM
Integrating runtime context into CSPM addresses the limitations of traditional approaches by providing real-time insights into how cloud resources are utilized. Leveraging real-time, runtime insights offers several key benefits:
- Enhanced Risk Prioritization: By analyzing misconfigurations within the context of the live environment, security teams can prioritize issues based on their actual impact. For instance, a misconfiguration that is actively exploitable in the runtime environment would be addressed before one that poses a theoretical risk.
- Accelerated Root Cause Analysis: Access to runtime data enables teams to quickly trace the origins of security incidents and track findings’ progress, reducing the time spent on investigations and allowing for more efficient remediation.
- Proactive Security Measures: With insights into runtime behavior, organizations can implement security measures that address both current configurations and emerging threats, leading to a more resilient security posture.
Upwind’s Runtime-Powered CSPM Approach
Upwind solves the CSPM alert fatigue problem by integrating real-time, runtime context into CSPM, powered by context from our next-generation eBPF sensor. By correlating this real-time context from layers 3, 4 and 7 with traditional CSPM frameworks and findings, Upwind provides deeper security insights. Layer 3 (network layer) helps identify unauthorized network access, Layer 4 (transport layer) reveals suspicious traffic patterns, and Layer 7 (application layer) detects anomalies in application behavior.
This multi-layered approach ensures a more accurate understanding of real-world risks.
- Prioritized Misconfiguration Findings: Upwind automatically ranks misconfiguration findings by severity, leveraging real environmental variables. This ensures that security teams focus on issues that present the greatest risk to their specific environment.
- Comprehensive Visibility: The Upwind Topology Graph allows teams to query inventories, visualize resource policies, and understand the impact of custom policies on environmental risk. This holistic view facilitates informed decision-making and strategic security planning.
- Customizable Frameworks & Policies: Upwind provides the ability to create custom posture frameworks by importing rules from multiple common frameworks such as CIS, HIPAA, SOC, and more – as well as creating custom policies and custom policy scope for specific organizational needs.
- Shift-Left Security: By integrating runtime intelligence into CI/CD pipelines, Upwind empowers development teams to address vulnerabilities during the build process, preventing potential issues from reaching production environments.
As cloud environments continue to grow in complexity, the evolution of CSPM to incorporate runtime context is not just beneficial but essential. This integration enables organizations to prioritize risks effectively, respond swiftly to incidents, and maintain a proactive security stance. Upwind’s commitment to runtime-powered CSPM provides tools and insights that align with the dynamic nature of modern cloud infrastructures, eliminating up to 98% of unnecessary alerts and accelerating remediation by a factor of 10. By simplifying posture findings, Upwind empowers security teams to resolve critical risks faster and focus on the threats that matter most.
To learn more about Upwind’s runtime-powered CSPM, schedule a demo today.
