Cloud security organizations face many challenges: complex multi-cloud environments, sophisticated threat actors, and too many security tools producing too many alerts. Traditional approaches of periodic scans and posture management are not enough against modern threats that can exploit vulnerabilities and move laterally in minutes.
Twain Taylor, an editor at Software Plaza, spoke with Sarah Elkaim, Head of Product Marketing at Sweet Security, about how their tool is making waves with its runtime-first approach. While many vendors are still focused on agentless snapshot-based security, Sweet has gone all in on real-time monitoring with eBPF technology to detect and respond to threats as they happen.
This article will explore five reasons why Sweet Security is becoming a leader in runtime-first cloud protection and why this matters for organizations struggling to secure their cloud environments.
Problems with traditional cloud security approaches
Before we get into Sweet’s differentiators, let’s talk about the problems with traditional cloud security approaches. Most organizations have built their security stacks in an ad hoc manner, implementing point solutions to address specific security concerns. This has led to several big problems:
- Tool sprawl and siloed information: Security teams use different tools for posture management, workload protection, and identity security, creating data silos and complexity.
- Alert fatigue: Multiple security tools produce thousands of alerts, making it hard to prioritize and address the important stuff.
- Periodic scanning blindspots: Traditional agentless solutions scan every 8-24 hours, leaving big blindspots between scans.
- Limited runtime visibility: Without real-time monitoring, you can’t detect active breaches as they happen.
- Ineffective vulnerability prioritization: Most tools identify vulnerabilities, but can’t prioritize which ones are actual risks in runtime environments.
Sweet Security has designed its platform to address these problems, with a comprehensive runtime-first approach to cloud security.
1. Advanced eBPF-powered runtime visibility
At the heart of Sweet Security’s approach is eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) technology. While many traditional security solutions rely on agents that are resource-intensive and disruptive, Sweet has developed proprietary eBPF sensors that run at the kernel level in a non-intrusive way. These sensors collect real-time signals from every workload in the environment, not point-in-time snapshots.
2. Contextual vulnerability prioritization
One of the biggest challenges organizations face is prioritization of vulnerabilities. Traditional vulnerability management approaches identify all potential vulnerabilities but provide no context on which ones are actual risks.
Sweet Security’s runtime approach changes vulnerability prioritization by providing context that matters. This contextual approach has shown a reduction in vulnerabilities that need immediate attention, so security teams can focus on what matters most. Instead of analyzing vulnerabilities in theory, Sweet shows how they manifest in reality in your environment.
3. Dynamic identity threat detection
Identity-based attacks are one of the hardest to detect because attackers use legitimate credentials. Traditional security tools can’t identify these attacks because the credentials being used are valid, but they just happen to be in the wrong hands.
What’s cool about Sweet’s approach is that it looks for multiple suspicious indicators instead of a single signal. For example, a user logging in from an unusual IP address might be suspicious, but when combined with that same user trying to spin up cloud resources outside their normal role, it’s a stronger indicator of compromise.
Sweet’s multi-faceted approach detects identity-based attacks that would go undetected by traditional security tools, giving you early warning of credential compromise.
4. Narrative-driven incident storytelling
Security incidents are complex events with multiple components that can be difficult to understand, even for experienced analysts. Sweet Security has reimagined how security incidents are presented through what they call “story” visualization.
The platform identifies “smoking gun” events, it’s the most critical actions that occurred during the incident, allowing analysts to quickly understand what happened without having to sift through thousands of alerts.
This narrative approach, combined with visual attack graphs, has dramatically reduced the mean time to resolve (MTR) incidents. According to Sweet, customers who previously took 3 hours to 10 days to detect and respond to attacks can now handle them in 5-10 minutes.
5. Proprietary LLMs for environment-specific security
Perhaps the most innovative aspect of Sweet’s approach is its use of proprietary large language models (LLMs) that learn the specific characteristics of each customer’s environment. This represents a significant departure from traditional rule-based detection.
While many security vendors are incorporating AI and ML capabilities, Sweet has developed LLMs specifically designed to understand cloud security contexts. The key advantage is that each customer gets security detection tailored to their specific environment rather than generic rules that generate excessive false positives.
This approach has enabled Sweet to achieve near-zero false positives while providing immediate answers to the most critical questions: Is this a real threat? What happened? What’s the impact?
The future of runtime-first cloud security
As cloud environments continue to grow in complexity, the need for runtime-first security approaches will only increase. Sweet Security is positioning itself at the forefront of this evolution, focusing on enhancing its capabilities to provide an even deeper understanding of application business logic and risk assessment.
For organizations struggling with cloud security challenges, Sweet’s runtime-first approach offers a compelling alternative to traditional methods. By focusing on real-time visibility, contextual prioritization, and environment-specific detection, Sweet is demonstrating how modern cloud security platforms can effectively protect dynamic cloud environments against sophisticated threats.
Integrating runtime security into your strategy
While Sweet Security advocates for a runtime-first approach, they recognize that no single tool can address all security needs. Organizations should consider how runtime security fits into their broader security strategy.
The key is ensuring these tools integrate effectively, allowing for seamless data sharing and coordinated response. Sweet Security’s platform offers numerous integrations with other security tools, notification systems, and workflow automation platforms to facilitate this approach.
By embracing runtime-first security while maintaining integration with existing security investments, organizations can build a more effective defense against modern cloud threats, detecting and responding to breaches in minutes rather than days.
Listen to the complete podcast to find out more about why Sweet Security has been leading in cloud protection.
