Cloud Incident Response: Going Beyond Traditional Detection & Response

Cloud Incident Response and Detection does not fit in the same mould as On-premise data centers. Incident Response in Cloud mastery requires going beyond what a CSPM or CNAPP gives you.

Hello from the Cloud-verse!

Welcome to this week's edition of the Cloud Security Newsletter!

This week, we're diving deep into Cloud Incident Response and Detection, exploring how organizations are adapting their security operations for cloud environments. With insights from industry veterans, we'll examine the practical challenges, essential strategies, and emerging approaches for effective threat detection in the cloud.

Featured Experts This Week ??

• William Bengtson - VP of Security Operations, Engineering and Operations at HashiCorp
• Andrew Tabona - Leader of Cyber Threat Management at a Fortune 500 Financial Services Company
• Ashish Rajan ????????♂? - CISO, Trainer & Host of Cloud Security Podcast

Definitions and Core Concepts ??

Let's clarify some key terms that will be referenced throughout:

• Cloud Detection and Response (CDR): Unlike traditional security tools, CDR platforms are specifically designed for cloud environments, focusing on real-time threat detection and response across cloud services.
• Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM): Tools that assess cloud infrastructure against security best practices and compliance requirements, primarily focusing on misconfigurations and policy violations.
• Event-Based Architecture: A fundamental shift in cloud security monitoring where actions are tracked as discrete events rather than traditional log entries, enabling more dynamic and real-time detection capabilities.

This week's issue is sponsored by Vanta

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Our Insights from these Practitioners ??

1. The Fundamental Shift in Cloud Detection

Cloud incident response requires a significant mindset shift from traditional approaches. Will Bengtson emphasizes this transformation:

> "If you think about … the scale and complexity of the cloud there's hundreds of services out there and honestly it feels every week or so they're releasing more and more of these services... the way logs are formatted and analyzed is different across CSPs."

The key differences include:

• Distributed nature of evidence across multiple services and regions
• Real-time event processing versus traditional log analysis
• Need for cloud-specific detection strategies

2. Beyond CSPM: The Need for Comprehensive Detection

A critical insight shared by Andrew Tabona highlights the limitations of relying solely on CSPM:

> "CSPM for me is about hygiene, it's about cleaning up misconfigurations and policy violations, but it doesn't really excel at alerting or detecting real-time attacks like somebody's actively doing something in your environment that you need to know about."

Organizations need to consider:

• Real-time detection capabilities beyond configuration checks
• Integration of threat intelligence with cloud-native controls
• Custom detection development for organization-specific threats

Early Exclusive for newsletter audience interested in CSPM, CNAPP?- We are running a Mind the CNAPP Original series that will do deeper into what CNAPP doesn’t cover and why a lot of organization have gone beyond what a CSPM can help with. As a Newsletter subscriber you get Early Exclusive Access to the Original and downloads that come with it. Fill out this form to be notified when the series goes live.

3. The Evolution of SOC Teams in Cloud Security

An important trend highlighted by Ashish Rajan is the shifting responsibility for cloud security alerts:

"Security operations team or the SOC team is going to be the new owner of cloud security alerts... unfortunately because security operations have traditionally looked after on-premise alerts as well as the alerts from other environments, not the cloud ones, now they have to pick up quickly on what these cloud security alerts are, how to triage them."

This transition presents both challenges and opportunities:

• SOC teams need to develop cloud-specific expertise
• Traditional alert handling processes need adaptation for cloud environments
• New context and knowledge requirements for effective triage

Will Bengtson reinforces this point about SOC evolution:

"You might have folks that come with some detection experience. They're used to doing it in whatever platform they had before... But when it goes beyond in scaling and detecting, you want them to go build something or transform a log. What I'm finding is not everyone actually has the hands-on experience to build in the cloud."

4. Building Effective Detection Programs

Will Bengtson shares practical advice for organizations starting their cloud detection journey:

> "From a log perspective, with CloudTrail, it's turn it on for the organization... and you're scaling automatically there. If you're doing it account by account, then, yeah, as you grow your accounts, go turn it on more. Make sure you centralize it."

Key considerations include:

• Starting with fundamental logging and monitoring
• Prioritizing critical assets and crown jewels
• Building relationships with development teams and stakeholders
• Developing automated response capabilities carefully

5. Measuring Success and ROI

Andrew Tabona provides concrete metrics for measuring the effectiveness of cloud detection programs:

> "Three metrics to keep in mind are meantime to detect, meantime to respond, and meantime to recover... if you can show that the time and money you spent has resulted in faster detection and faster response and faster recovery times... then you're speaking their exact language."

This newsletter combines perspectives from all three experts to provide a comprehensive view of how Incident Response in Cloud, Incident D&R is evolving in the cloud security landscape. The insights should help practitioners understand and prepare for the significant changes coming in 2025.

1. AWS CloudTrail Documentation
2. Cloud Security Alliance: Cloud Incident Response Framework
3. MITRE ATT&CK Cloud Matrix
4. HashiCorp's Cloud Security Best Practices Guide

Related Podcast Episodes ??

Question for you this week? (Comment below)

Do you believe CNAPP or CSPM Cloud Security Alerts are enough for Incident Response in Cloud??

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We would love to hear from you?? for a feature or topic request or if you would like to sponsor an edition of Cloud Security Newsletter.

Thank you for continuing to subscribe and Welcome to the new members in tis newsletter community??

Peace!

Shilpi Bhattacharjee

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