Cloud Workload Protection and Runtime Security: Defending Your Cloud Assets

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) provide security for workloads running in cloud environments, including virtual machines, containers, and serverless functions. Runtime security adds real-time threat detection and response capabilities to protect against active attacks.

CWPP Core Capabilities

Vulnerability Management: Continuous scanning of workloads for known CVEs
Configuration Assessment: Hardening checks against CIS benchmarks
Runtime Protection: Behavioral monitoring and threat detection
Network Segmentation: Micro-segmentation and firewall policies
File Integrity Monitoring: Detection of unauthorized file changes

Runtime Security with Falco

# Falco rules for container runtime security
- rule: Terminal shell in container
  desc: Detect shell spawned in a container
  condition: >
    spawned_process and container and shell_procs
  output: >
    Shell spawned in container (user=%user.name container=%container.name
    shell=%proc.name parent=%proc.pname cmdline=%proc.cmdline)
  priority: WARNING

- rule: Sensitive file access
  desc: Detect access to sensitive files
  condition: >
    open_read and container and 
    (fd.name startswith /etc/shadow or fd.name startswith /etc/passwd)
  output: >
    Sensitive file opened (file=%fd.name container=%container.name)
  priority: CRITICAL

Kubernetes Runtime Security

# Deploy Falco as DaemonSet
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
  name: falco
  namespace: security
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: falco
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: falco
        image: falcosecurity/falco:latest
        securityContext:
          privileged: true
        volumeMounts:
        - name: dev
          mountPath: /host/dev
        - name: proc
          mountPath: /host/proc
          readOnly: true

AWS GuardDuty Integration

# Terraform - Enable GuardDuty with EKS protection
resource "aws_guardduty_detector" "main" {
  enable = true

  datasources {
    kubernetes {
      audit_logs {
        enable = true
      }
    }
    malware_protection {
      scan_ec2_instance_with_findings {
        ebs_volumes {
          enable = true
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Best Practices

1. Defense in Depth: Layer multiple security controls – network, host, and application level.

2. Immutable Infrastructure: Replace rather than patch workloads to reduce attack surface.

3. Automated Response: Configure automated remediation for common threats.

Conclusion

Effective cloud workload protection requires combining preventive controls with runtime detection capabilities. By implementing CWPP solutions alongside runtime security tools like Falco, organizations can detect and respond to threats before they cause damage.

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