Threat Detection on a Cloud-Native Attack Surface

Public cloud infrastructure has become the standard for launching and scaling businesses, presenting a new attack surface characterized by the aggregate of exploitable IT pathways. While the cloud offers advantages such as built-in logging and easy asset inventory through APIs, it also accelerates the creation of new security gaps as developers expand the attack surface. Efforts to mitigate these risks with strategies like shift-left and zero-trust have proven insufficient, leading to an increased reliance on threat detection and incident response. The concept of a "detection surface" is introduced, which refers to the IT asset types where attacker activity can be detected, varying across different scopes and tools. As developers enhance the cloud attack surface, they also expand the detection surface, creating a need for security operations centers (SOCs) to effectively interpret and act on the data flowing into SIEM systems. Despite the challenges, most security teams are still developing expertise in cloud environments, underscoring the importance of maturing SOC strategies to cover cloud-native software development activities. An upcoming webinar featuring Allie Mellen from Forrester will address these issues, focusing on the future of cloud detection and response.