Ep. 79 Agentless Cloud Security

June 22, 2023

(We recorded this from the floor of the AWS Summit at the Washington Convention Center)

When a federal agency takes a legacy application and moves to the cloud, there is typically a challenge in scaling. This can be due to ingesting a tremendous amount of new data, classifying that data accurately, and making sure the correct people get access to that data.

Traditionally, data would be scanned by looking at one machine, some would call this having an “agent” on each machine. When a federal agency had a server down the hall, that was no problem.

However, the size of today’s hybrid cloud systems can make that process slow. This lack of speed can hamper utilizing dynamic data as well as some cybersecurity concerns.

"We don't deploy agents because we're leveraging the native cloud technology to get the information within that cloud ecosystem "

Doug Hudson, Orca Security Tweet

The innovation that Orca Security’s Doug Hudson explains is classified as “agentless.” Orca Security takes a lateral approach to investigate data characteristics.

This approach eliminates the backlog that a traditional, agent-based system gives the user. Doug details some of the benefits of that approach – it can handle multiple risk factors.

First, it allows for a frictionless approach to scaling. It can handle all kinds of risks, everything from identification to malicious code.

Further, this approach gives the administrator the ability to put together a dashboard that will give a visual representation of threats and system analysis as well.

Listen to the interview to understand how Orca Security can help with leaked passwords, exposed credentials, and over-permissive identities.

If you enjoyed this article, you may want to listen to Ep. 73 How to Build Federal Systems for Scale and Resilience