Skybox introduces threat-centric vulnerability management for cloud, virtual network

Skybox Security, a cyber security management facilitator, rolled out Skybox for the Cloud, a solution catering to threat-centric vulnerability management (TCVM) for virtual and multi-cloud environments, with extended capabilities for security policy management, attack surface visibility and network path analysis.

As businesses continue to migrate to virtual and cloud environments, security becomes more complicated due to the nature of cloud architecture, from multi-tenancy to elasticity and the shared responsibility for the computing stack. For example, security mechanisms in virtual and cloud networks are different from physical environments, and even differ between cloud service providers.

In addition, cloud elasticity means virtual machines are quickly spun up and down, making traditional vulnerability scanning insufficient as the environment may change significantly between scans.

To counteract these challenges and reduce the chance of human error, Skybox helps automate security processes not only in virtual and cloud environments, but across all networks within a single, unified dashboard.

"IT teams are tasked with launching new services and applications on a daily basis. By leveraging cloud architecture, they can achieve that in minutes - opposed to days of work. The challenge is that this leads to a fluid security situation where assets (virtual machines) can be assigned to the wrong security group, resulting in immediate exposure. Security teams need to be on top of this, and the only way to do it is have global visibility and management across all your networks," said Skybox VP of Products Ravid Circus.

Whether an organisation's network infrastructure is physical, virtual, cloud or a hybrid of all three, Skybox for the Cloud addresses a number of use cases in the following areas:

-Comprehensive visibility of the attack surface in a single network model, capable of incorporating data from over 120 security and networking technologies

-End-to-end path analysis from any source to any destination across or within physical, virtual and multi-cloud networks, including detailed path analysis on the devices, rules, and so on, along the path

-Unified security policy management across all networks, including out-of-the-box compliance checks for key industry regulations such as NIST and PCI DSS

As cyber events like the Equifax breach (caused by the Apache Struts vulnerability) continue to increase, organisations are struggling to quickly identify and effectively remediate vulnerabilities in their systems. This challenge can be compounded by the nature of cloud environments and even procedural requirements from service providers that impact third-party scans.

Skybox for the Cloud gives security teams the power to assess vulnerabilities in the cloud on demand by combining data from cloud-based patch and asset management systems, scanners and network devices. The results are analysed and prioritized using the TCVM approach, taking into account the vulnerabilities on the virtual machine and its importance to the organisation, the virtual machine's exposure based on the hybrid network topology and security controls in place, and threat intelligence on available and active exploits in the wild.