Agent-based Cloud Security Solution? No thanks!

If your organization relies on the cloud for a majority of its operations, you may want to look closer at the type of architecture your security solution uses – whether it is agent-based or agentless. While some might say that it is irrelevant and that you should focus only on the security solution’s efficiency, we beg to differ. Picking the right kind of cloud security solution can drastically affect your organization’s day-to-day operations and how much ownership you can take over the security solution.

Therefore, it becomes crucial to understand the difference between the two types of architectures.

Simply put, an agent-based cloud security solution involves the installation of small software agents for each server instance. Every request that has to communicate with the server, communicates instead with the agent. The agent then extracts the necessary information from the server and passes it on to the control system for processing. These agents govern the movement of data across all the entities of your cloud network while securing your server from unwarranted requests that could compromise your network.

Agentless security solutions, on the other hand, communicate directly with the server using the service provider’s API. Agentless solutions offer complete transparency and greatly reduce the load on your network as there are no additional software packages associated with server instances.

Why you shouldn’t opt for Agent-based Security

Choosing to go with an agent-based security solution can create the very problem you are looking to eliminate – security threats. Here’s why.

Dependency on third-party agents

If you choose to rely on an agent-based cloud security solution, you choose to give your network’s control to third-party cloud solution providers. Your network security’s upgrades have to depend on the patches, updates and other support systems offered by a company which might not understand how critical your operations are. Even if you have to troubleshoot an issue with in-house software, your efforts have to be supported by your vendor’s agents.

Too much of a hassle

If your network has a large number of instances or virtual machines, with instances being added and deleted frequently, then managing the agents on all these instances in itself becomes a hassle and might require dedicated resources to manage them.

It isn’t hard to create a rogue instance

Organizations using popular services like Azure and AWS also integrate native cloud services like ELB (load balancer) and RDS (database service) with their platform. Agent-based security solutions do not protect these integrations as these services do not allow agents to be installed on them. In fact, agent-based solutions do not even guarantee that the incoming traffic is only from the ELB and the outbound traffic goes only to the RDS or other designated database services. This could open up your network to unauthorized permissions, which you cannot control or monitor.

When you choose to go with an agentless solution, you can bypass all the above mentioned issues while still having complete ownership of your cloud security solution. An agentless solution like Akku from CloudNow Technologies which can do much more to protect your cloud without interfering with your operations.

In the process of Identity and Access Management, Akku can directly communicate with your Active Directory and ensure that authentication and authorization are granted only to legitimate requests. We understand that data virtualization and virtual data centers have even more to offer to businesses than what they are being used for today.

To know more about Akku and how it can help you take control of your cloud network, get in touch with us now!
Contact us