Why You Can’t Afford to Ignore Prioritizing Vulnerabilities in the Cloud

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Becca Gomby
Thursday, Mar 2nd, 2023

In cloud environments, assets, resources, and permissions are constantly changing and being updated. As such, risks in cloud environments are dynamic and new security findings and alerts are identified and sent to cloud security teams via their various cloud security tools.  

Visibility is a key component when it comes to these teams managing the security of their organizations’ cloud environment. However, alongside visibility, cloud security teams require context to understand which of the identified cloud risks and alerts really matter.  

Context is king 

By considering relevant context of a cloud environment, cloud security teams can better identify and prioritize the most critical risks and threats that need to be addressed. Context enables prioritization of cloud risks by providing a more detailed understanding of the security posture of a cloud system or application and helps security teams to identify and focus on the most critical risks that need to be addressed. 

Why prioritization of risks, matters 

Context provides the ability of cloud security teams and DevOps engineers to better prioritize their risks - it helps cloud security practitioners with: 

  • Limited resources: DevSecOps and Cloud Engineers are often dealing with limited resources, such as time, budget, and manpower. Prioritization helps them to allocate these resources effectively to the vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk to the organization. 
  • Reducing attack surface: Prioritizing vulnerabilities helps DevSecOps and Cloud Engineers to identify and address the most critical vulnerabilities first, which in turn helps to reduce the organization's overall attack surface. This is particularly important in the cloud, where the attack surface can be larger and more complex than in traditional on-premises environments. 
  • Compliance requirements: Many compliance frameworks require organizations to prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities within a certain timeframe. By prioritizing vulnerabilities, DevSecOps and Cloud Engineers can ensure that they are meeting these requirements and avoiding potential penalties or fines.  
  • Protecting critical assets: Prioritization helps DevSecOps and Cloud Engineers to identify and protect the most critical assets, such as customer data, intellectual property, and other sensitive information. By focusing on vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk to these assets, they can reduce the likelihood of a successful attack. 
  • Mitigating business impact: Prioritization of vulnerabilities helps DevSecOps and cloud Engineers to mitigate the potential impact of successful attacks. By addressing the most critical vulnerabilities first, they can reduce the likelihood of a successful attack and minimize potential damage. 

Panoptica’s Workload Scanning  

Panoptica’s CNAPP solution is graph-based and efficiently prioritizes and remediates cloud security risks in minutes, including as it applies to workload scanning. The ability to prioritize vulnerabilities in workload scanning means that: 

  • High-risk workloads are scanned first, allowing for more efficient allocation of resources 
  • Cloud security engineers can quickly identify and address critical security issues that could potentially lead to data breaches or other security incidents 
  • Critical workloads will be prioritized and scanned to ensure they meet compliance requirements 
  • Security posture for the organization will be improved as the focus will be on the most critical workloads and the ability to address and remediate them swiftly and efficiently.
Panoptica’s Workload Scanning
Panoptica’s Workload Scanning

Panoptica’s workload scanning easily surfaces the critical vulnerabilities and prioritizes them automatically.

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