Agentless cloud security refers to monitoring and securing cloud environments without installing software agents. It relies on APIs to provide real-time insights, simplifying deployment and minimizing performance impacts on resources.
What is Agentless Cloud Security?
Agentless cloud security is a monitoring approach that provides visibility into potential threats within cloud environments without requiring the installation of software agents on each host.
Unlike the agent-based model, where each host must run a monitoring agent to collect data and send it to the security service, agentless cloud security uses cloud provider APIs and metadata to gather data directly.
This approach simplifies setup and maintenance by eliminating the need for agent configuration on each host.
The core principles of agentless cloud security include:
- Privileged API Access: The security vendor is granted privileged access to the customer’s cloud environment via APIs, allowing it to discover all resources and services in use.
- Snapshot Scanning: The security service creates snapshots of workloads in the cloud environment, mounts them as read-only file systems, and scans the virtual machines (VMs) spun from these snapshots for vulnerabilities. Once the analysis is complete, the snapshots are deleted.
Agentless security enhances ease of use by reducing configuration complexity and providing seamless coverage of cloud resources. It also lowers the attack surface by removing the risks associated with agent-based monitoring, which may be vulnerable to exploitation through network-connected agent processes.
Key Features of Agentless Cloud Security
Compatible Across All Platforms
Agentless cloud security works seamlessly across all platforms, regardless of the operating system or device type. From switches and routers to IoT devices, it integrates effortlessly without compatibility issues. This ensures a smooth scanning process across your entire network, free from disruptions or fuss.
Cuts Down Administrative Costs
Eliminating the need to install and manage agents on each virtual machine significantly cuts down administrative costs. This hassle-free setup saves time and money, making it especially valuable for managing large-scale virtual environments.
Effortless Scalability
Agentless solutions scale with your needs, whether you’re managing a single server or an expansive data center. Its lightweight and scalable approach connects seamlessly with cloud resources, simplifying growth without the need for complex setups.
Doesn’t Affect Existing Environments
Agentless scanning captures snapshots of your resources without altering them. By leveraging APIs, it analyzes data without impacting system performance or requiring additional maintenance. Your environment remains unchanged and fully optimized.
Complete Network Scanning
Agentless security provides a holistic view of your cloud network. It continuously scans assets, connected devices, and applications for vulnerabilities, ensuring you stay informed of risks in real time. With automatic updates and uninterrupted scanning, your security posture has no blind spots.
Benefits of Agentless Cloud Security
Agentless cloud security revolutionizes protection by eliminating the need for software installations on devices. It offers seamless, efficient, and scalable security, perfect for today’s dynamic cloud environments. Let’s explore its key benefits.
- Reduced Friction and Administrative Overhead: Agentless security eliminates the friction caused by installing and managing agents on cloud assets. Unlike agent-based solutions, it requires minimal manual labor and maintenance. This simplicity translates into faster deployment, reduced administrative efforts, and cost savings.
- Minimized Resource Consumption: Agents consume computational resources, which can burden your system and disrupt applications. Agentless solutions avoid this by operating without agents, ensuring lower system resource usage and no interference with workloads or applications.
- Non-Intrusive Operations: Agentless cloud security scans your data remotely via APIs, bringing the data to the scanner instead of embedding a scanner into your environment. This approach minimizes disruption to existing infrastructure and ensures smoother operations without altering configurations or requiring maintenance on individual assets.
- Expanded Coverage for Cloud-Specific Needs: Agentless solutions are particularly well-suited to modern cloud environments with ephemeral workloads, halted machines, and other transient resources. These assets are inspected regularly, ensuring vulnerabilities in fleeting workloads don’t go unnoticed.
- Flexibility and Scalability: Agentless cloud security adapts easily to changing cloud environments. Its streamlined architecture ensures scalability, whether you’re monitoring a small system or an expansive multi-cloud network. It offers flexibility to handle diverse platforms and operating systems smoothly.
- Simplified Management Interface: A centralized and simplified interface allows for easy oversight and management of your entire cloud infrastructure. This unification reduces complexity, making it easier to monitor risks and enforce policies effectively.
- Cost Efficiency: Agentless security reduces operational costs by eliminating the need to install, update, or maintain agents. Additionally, this solution’s lightweight nature minimizes resource use, further contributing to cost savings.
Agent-Based Vs Agentless Security: A Comparison
Agentless and agent-based security are two approaches to protecting your cloud environment. Agent-based security involves installing software agents on each server or application to monitor and protect it. While this can provide detailed security insights, it often requires extensive maintenance and can slow down systems due to the resources the agents consume.
Agentless cloud security, on the other hand, doesn’t rely on these agents. Instead, it integrates directly with cloud provider tools and APIs, making it more straightforward to deploy and manage. This method avoids the performance hits and complexity of agent-based solutions, providing a more streamlined and efficient way to secure your cloud assets. It’s instrumental in large-scale or multi-cloud environments where managing individual agents can become impractical.
Here is a quick summary of the differences:
| Feature | Agentless Security | Agent-Based Security |
| Deployment | Cloud-based, no agent installation required | Requires agent installation on individual systems |
| Scalability | Highly scalable, suitable for large-scale environments | It may require more resources for scaling |
| Performance Impact | Minimal performance overhead | Can potentially impact system performance |
| Visibility | Provides comprehensive visibility into cloud environments | Offers deeper visibility into individual systems |
| Complexity | Generally simpler to manage | It can be more complex to manage, especially in large-scale deployments |
| Use Cases | Ideal for cloud-native environments, continuous monitoring, and vulnerability scanning | Suitable for organizations with complex security requirements, endpoint protection, and data loss prevention |
For a more in-depth analysis and to determine the best fit for your organization, check out our dedicated blog post on agentless vs. agent-based security.
CloudDefense.AI’s Approach to Agentless Security
CloudDefense.AI redefines cloud security with an agentless solution that delivers seamless deployment and non-intrusive, end-to-end protection for your servers, virtual machines, applications, and other cloud assets.
Our platform is built with flexibility in mind, offering customizable rules to detect misconfigurations and vulnerabilities at both the host and cloud levels—eliminating the need for cumbersome agent installations. With CloudDefense.AI, you can remediate issues directly from a unified, intuitive interface, giving you complete visibility and control over your cloud security posture.
What Sets CloudDefense.AI Apart?
- Lightning-Fast Deployment: CloudDefense.AI’s agentless-first architecture enables setup in minutes, delivering a detailed risk profile of your entire cloud environment in less than 24 hours. This is achieved without transmitting a single network packet or running any code within your infrastructure.
- Unparalleled Continuous Coverage: Unlike agent-based solutions, CloudDefense.AI ensures comprehensive, always-on protection for all assets, including virtual machines, containers, serverless functions, and critical cloud infrastructure components like storage buckets and VPCs. Newly added assets are automatically detected and included in your security framework.
- Full-Stack Risk Visibility: Gain unparalleled insights into your cloud ecosystem with CloudDefense.AI. From containers and Kubernetes to serverless environments, the platform identifies vulnerabilities, compliance gaps, and risks like file integrity issues and suspicious logs. Every finding is enriched with contextual information, empowering your teams to prioritize and mitigate risks effectively.
CloudDefense.AI transforms cloud security by delivering robust, agentless protection that scales with your environment, reducing operational friction and enhancing security outcomes.
Ready to secure your cloud assets effortlessly?
Book your CloudDefense.AI demo today and experience the future of agentless cloud security.
