The rapid growth of hybrid and multi-cloud environments has created complexity across architectures, making it difficult to see clearly and completely across a variety of platforms in a tech stack. Recent surges in cloud attacks and breaches have given attention to how teams should efficiently protect and run applications in the cloud. This is especially true as misconfigurations top the list of security threats in cloud environments and are one of the most preferred launching pads for cloud-based attacks. Plus, cloud adoption continues to grow. A new cloud security posture management (CSPM) study conducted by ESG shows that one in seven businesses is placing 40% of its applications in public clouds — and that number is expected to double in two years.

CSPM was developed to address misconfigurations in cloud infrastructure, but its capabilities are too basic for today’s complexity. Traditional CSPM is not enough. Modern security teams need the capabilities of real-time CSPM to work across multiple clouds and environments to prevent employee burnout and maximize strong security posture. Let’s explore the top three challenges of traditional CSPM tools and the benefits of more modern solutions.

Challenge One: Lack of Sophistication and Automation

While traditional CSPM tools discover cloud configuration issues, help remediate problems and assist with reporting and auditing to demonstrate compliance, they lack the sophistication and innovation needed to drive security teams forward. Traditional CSPM doesn’t allow for the robust automation of tasks across infrastructure and running workloads that teams need to run efficiently, so it typically serves as a passive assistant as teams scramble to address vulnerabilities. With these limited capabilities, security teams will be at a natural disadvantage, missing out on the streamlined approach that results from reducing manual tasks.

Challenge Two: Limitations From Point-in-Time Snapshots

Most CSPM solutions offer agentless scanning, which involves taking snapshots of running workloads through a cloud provider’s API and scanning them for issues. Agentless scanning offers a variety of capabilities — it automatically discovers and maps all cloud resources, understands basic levels of workload risk and quickly demonstrates compliance. However, these are only a portion of the benefits that can be reaped when working from point-in-time snapshots.

According to Aqua, a staggering 52% of cloud-native attacks evade agentless detection. Missing from this equation is the ability to see today’s evolving threats: In-memory attacks, transitionary containers and evasive behaviors. With a 1,400% increase in in-memory or fileless attacks, tools need to evolve as threats do. The challenge is for teams to move beyond static visibility with only periodic workload scans to tools that provide real-time visibility to be most effective.

Challenge Three: Incomplete Visibility and Alert Fatigue

Traditional CSPM tools also don’t provide full visibility into cloud-native environments. They often rely on known threat signatures and may not be effective against novel or zero-day threats because they can’t recognize these unknown vulnerabilities or attack vectors. In Aqua’s research team’s honeypots, 63% of the 700,000 attacks were known malware, so traditional CSPM tools — which only detect known malware — would have missed more than a third of the attacks. With today’s evolving threat attack landscape, teams need a more dynamic solution.

Additionally, an overwhelming amount of noise in cloud environments also distracts teams from high-priority vulnerabilities when using traditional CSPM tools. Large, complex clouds come with too many alerts for teams to address because low effective risks and real risks are mixed, leading to burnout from alerts. In fact, 82% of security pros experience alert fatigue, according to a Dimensional Research study. Treating all alerts with the same amount of urgency without a hierarchy for prioritizing critical issues before low-risk ones result in inconsistent and conflicting data and difficulty in operationalizing responses.

Reaping the True Benefits of CSPM With Modern Tools

Replacing traditional CSPM tools — which use agentless scanning alone — with modern ones can help security practitioners combat these challenges. Implementing modern CSPM tools that combine agentless and agent-based scanning results in the most complete and prioritized view possible through in-workload scanning. However, it’s not enough to simply deploy both agentless and agents without harmonization between the two. Bolting on independent runtime agents — the core and most technically complex part of workload protection — does not result in a full picture. To do this, there needs to be a strong connection, unified visibility and correlation of the risks between the two. Otherwise, the critical missing piece of context will prevent complete visibility, which modern CSPM offers.

Context lets teams see what the issue is, where it is and its level of urgency — all contributing to an understanding of risk and prioritizing issues. This is especially important because today, security teams have tighter budgets, less personnel and more demands, making them strapped for time and resources. Chasing and fixing every single issue — no matter the priority level — is not sustainable. And it’s dangerous.

Context also helps security practitioners understand how impactful an issue can be by determining real risk exposure and unifying risks. For example, Log4j is a known vulnerability that can cause catastrophic damage. However, depending on where it is and how it’s used, it can be benign and may not be a risk at all. Risk exposure to vulnerabilities such as Spring4Shell that require multiple issues or dependencies to be exploited by attackers can also be detected. Without the proper context, numerous alerts may be sent out to flag an issue, and if it’s not a legitimate threat, teams can spend countless hours on a risk that didn’t deserve their attention while potentially missing a more critical one. By prioritizing risks, noise is reduced, streamlining workflow.

Real-time visibility through a context-based CSPM tool is a modern solution that enables efficiency through quicker, more informed actions, yielding a safer environment. To step up cloud security, organizations should deploy a CSPM tool that includes agentless and agent-based scanning for the most elevated security posture. A modern approach to vulnerability management requires a modern CSPM solution for organizations to get the best security results.