Simplifying Azure Cloud Security with Snapshot-Based Scans

As organizations increasingly move to the cloud, securing these dynamic and transient environments has become a critical challenge for security teams. Cloud deployments are inherently more fluid than traditional infrastructure, with resources constantly being spun up, modified, or decommissioned. This rapid pace makes it difficult for traditional security approaches to keep up with the new vulnerabilities. Modern cloud environments demand security solutions that are both flexible and non-intrusive, capable of providing comprehensive coverage without causing disruptions. Security teams need methods that can automatically adjust to changes in the environment and continuously provide insights into potential vulnerabilities.

To address the complexities of cloud security, Qualys TotalCloud offers both agent-based and agentless vulnerability scans under Cloud Workload Protection. While the Qualys Agent excels in providing comprehensive monitoring of active workloads and continuously detecting vulnerabilities, the new snapshot-based scan offers an automated, zero-touch experience to security teams. This dual approach allows security teams to gain comprehensive visibility across online and offline environments, ensuring robust protection without impacting performance or requiring complex agent deployments.

Understanding Snapshot-Based Scans

Snapshot-based scan is one of the agentless scan techniques that TotalCloud offers. It captures the state of an environment at a specific moment, allowing security teams to analyze cloud workloads-both ephemeral and offline-without directly interacting with live systems. These scans gather crucial data, such as application inventory, configurations, versions, and more, and perform vulnerability assessment with Qualys Six Sigma accurate signatures and over 25 external threat feeds. All these happen while avoiding the risk of performance degradation or service disruption.

It's essential to understand that snapshot-based scanning isn't meant to replace agent-based scans but rather to complement them. Both approaches have strengths, and together, they provide a comprehensive security strategy. Qualys is uniquely positioned as the only vendor offering both snapshot- and agent-based scans within a unified platform. This combination allows organizations to benefit from deep, real-time insights provided by agents and broad, non-intrusive assessments from snapshot-based scanning. By integrating these methods, Qualys delivers unmatched security coverage across dynamic cloud environments, ensuring no security gap is overlooked.

By combining these two methods, organizations achieve comprehensive security coverage across their Azure environments. Agent-based scans provide comprehensive insights into individual workloads, while snapshot-based scans offer a broader view, including ephemeral and offline environments. This dual approach ensures that every aspect of your security posture is thoroughly assessed and monitored.

Qualys Extends Snapshot-Based Scan Capability to Azure Cloud

Qualys is now extending its snapshot-based scan capabilities to include Azure Cloud, providing comprehensive coverage for both online and offline VMs, as well as Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS). This extension ensures that all your virtual machines are scanned automatically with zero-touch deployment. By integrating this advanced capability, Qualys simplifies the management of security assessments across your Azure environment, offering seamless and automated vulnerability detection without manual intervention.

Key Benefits

1. Agentless and Non-Intrusive: Snapshot-based scanning does not require deploying any additional agents on your Azure Cloud VMs. This approach minimizes operational overhead and ensures that scanning activities do not interfere with the performance of live systems. By analyzing snapshots of your environment, these scans avoid downtime or performance issues associated with active scanning methods.

2. Automated Security for VM and VMSS: With Qualys' enhanced snapshot-based scanning, you can schedule automated scans for all Azure Cloud VMs and VMSS, ensuring continuous monitoring for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. This automation provides proactive security management, identifying and addressing issues before they can be exploited.

3. Scalability and Flexibility: Azure environments, including extensive VM and VMSS deployments, can be complex and large-scale. Snapshot-based scans scale efficiently across these environments, enabling comprehensive vulnerability assessments without manual intervention. This flexibility ensures that even as your Azure infrastructure grows, your security program remains robust and well-monitored.

4. Complementary Coverage with Qualys Agent: While snapshot-based scans offer a broad view of your Azure environment, Qualys Agents provide deep insights into individual workloads. Together, these methods deliver a comprehensive security strategy, combining the comprehensive vulnerability detections from agents with the broad, non-intrusive assessments from snapshot-based scans.

5. Comprehensive Visibility: Snapshot-based scans offer valuable visibility into the configuration and state of your Azure Cloud VMs and VMSS, helping to uncover misconfigurations, policy violations, and vulnerabilities. This broader perspective complements the detailed insights gained from Qualys Agents, ensuring no aspect of your security posture is overlooked.

Overcoming Cloud-Specific Security Challenges

Securing Azure and other cloud environments presents unique challenges that traditional security approaches often struggle to address. The dynamic nature of the cloud, combined with the sheer scale of cloud resources, can make it difficult to maintain visibility and control over your environment.

Snapshot-based scanning addresses these challenges by providing a scalable, non-intrusive way to monitor and assess your cloud security posture. Whether you're dealing with sprawling environments, multi-region deployments, or hybrid setups, snapshot-based scans give you the insights needed to stay ahead of potential security threats.

Snapshot-based scanning also excels in scenarios where deploying agents isn't practical. For example, in temporary cloud environments or environments with strict performance requirements, deploying agents may not be an option. Snapshot-based scans can step in and provide the security coverage needed without impacting performance or requiring agent management.

Comprehensive Security with Qualys TotalCloud

Qualys TotalCloud offers a robust solution that combines snapshot-based scanning and agents, providing a comprehensive security strategy for your multi-cloud environments. By integrating these methods, Qualys ensures that both broad, non-intrusive assessments and detailed, real-time data are available to address all aspects of your security posture.

If you want to dive deeper into CNAPP, download the 2024 Gartner CNAPP Market Guide, explore more about the Qualys TotalCloud Platform, get a customized and complimentary TotalCloud TruRisk Insights report, read our FAQ, or speak to a Qualys TotalCloud CNAPP Expert.

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Contributors

• Nayeem Islam, Vice President, Product Management, Qualys

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