The cybersecurity landscape has seen remarkable evolution over the years. Organizations have continually adapted to protect their digital assets and maintain compliance, from the first Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) to the emergence of Event Management and Security Information (SIEM). However, as we transition to the cloud era, there is a critical shift in our thinking about threat detection and response.
The rise of SIEM
SIEM, or Security Information and Event Management, first took shape in the early 2000s with a simple concept: gathering the history of all events in the IT environment. It was an essential tool for monitoring local systems, providing real-time insights into what was happening at any given time.
As organizations have moved to the cloud, many have adopted a “lift and shift” approach, extending their SIEM systems to monitor events in the cloud environment. However, this is where the fundamental differences between on-premises and cloud environments become apparent – the level of orchestration.
The cloud challenge
The cloud operates fully orchestrated, where each configuration change can have a substantial impact. While SIEM is great for answering the “what is happening now” question, it is not designed to provide the crucial answer to “what is the impact of these events.” He focused on the “what” and not the “so what.”
When investigating suspicious activity, security teams must understand the impact of each event and assess its potentially malicious nature. Within SIEM, assigning an asset to a security group can be misinterpreted by the security team. It requires mapping security group permissions, ensuring their security, and successfully determining the intent to disclose the risk.
Although such investigations can take hours, they can pose significant risks if misinterpreted. For example, if an attacker clones the RDS database and exposes it to the Internet, the technical consequences could be disastrous. This act can lead to unauthorized access, data breaches and potential data loss, putting the entire organization at serious risk.
This presented a significant challenge for security and operations teams. Analyzing the impact of each cloud configuration change can be time-consuming, making it impossible to effectively investigate each event. The result was an impossible decision – ignore the event or divert valuable resources to an investigation.
The emergence of Cloud Detection and Response (CDR)
Recognizing the limitations of traditional SIEM solutions in the cloud era, Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) has emerged as a game changer. CDR solutions cut through the noise of cloud events, allowing security teams to focus on what really matters. To successfully detect and respond in the cloud, CDR systems are designed to accurately assess the environmental impact of each event, sparing security teams from unnecessary distractions.
Qualities of an effective CDR solution
An ideal CDR solution must possess several essential qualities. He must be fully aware of the organization's unique environment, traffic patterns, usage, and business requirements. It must understand the dependencies between different nodes and provide contextual information, avoiding reporting events without context. Additionally, must be proficient in identifying normal behavior in a healthy cloud environment and detecting malicious activity when introduced. Most importantly, it must correlate posture and data with business priorities to ensure that interruptions only occur when necessary.
Integrating CDR with your infrastructure
The main goal of a CDR solution is to streamline the handling of cloud events in your infrastructure. It achieves this by effectively offloading cloud-related events from the SIEM, providing a clearer perspective on real risks and minimizing the disruptive effects of false positive alerts. Once this filtering process is complete, relevant alerts will be transmitted back to the SIEM, enabling a more focused and efficient approach to security monitoring.
Due to the elimination of false positives, many organizations choose to extend this streamlined alerting process to their instant messaging platforms. This additional communication layer ensures a coordinated response to security events, improving overall incident management capabilities.
Stream Security: Your CDR Solution
Stream Security stands out as a pioneering force in the CDR landscape, introducing “Cloud Twin”. This innovative model continuously analyzes an environment's data posture and traffic, aligning it with business needs and personalized protections. Stream Security empowers security teams to detect threats and exposures without falling victim to false positives, while helping operations teams respond confidently and quickly to remediation efforts – ideally suited for the dynamic era of the cloud.
Are you ready to elevate your cloud security game? Schedule a demo with Stream Security and enter the future of cloud security.
