Cloud-based infrastructure has one big clear security problem: by virtue of being in the cloud, it’s exposed to the public internet. Application, data, and other assets stored in the cloud are vulnerable in a different way than if they were behind a central firewall. That creates more opportunities for attackers to look for weak spots and vulnerabilities.
Cloud infrastructure, whether on-premises, on public infrastructure, or in some hybrid form, also enables a different kind of application deployment, using containers, microservices, and serverless functions. That means that traditional approaches to monitoring application security are no longer enough.
“With serverless, something can run for microseconds and then be done,” said John Gray, CTO at Infiniti Consulting Group. “How do you trace that? How do you monitor that? That’s where some of the new application monitoring tools have really taken off.”
