What is Cloud Detection & Response (CDR)? Definition, Tools and Solutions

Cloud detection and response (CDR) is a relatively new approach to security that is specifically designed for cloud environments. It helps organizations identify and respond to threats more quickly and effectively than traditional security solutions. CDR can also help to reduce alert fatigue by prioritizing alerts based on criticality.

What is Cloud Detection & Response (CDR)?

Cloud Detection & Response (CDR) is a security solution that combines continuous monitoring, threat detection, and incident response capabilities into a single platform. This allows organizations to quickly identify and respond to security threats in their cloud environments.

We've built a platform for Cloud Detection & Response in AWS, Azure, and GCP - you can grab a demo here. You can also download free playbooks we've written on how to respond to security incidents in AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Why is Cloud Detection & Response Important?

Cloud environments are complex and dynamic. Traditional security solutions are often not designed for the cloud, and they can be slow and ineffective at responding to threats. This leads to more work for SOC and IR teams to respond to cloud incidents.

While CDR solutions were specifically designed to address the challenges of responding to incidents in the cloud, Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) focus on preventing configuration and other issues that might lead to an incident.

How Does Cloud Detection & Response Work?

CDR solutions typically works by collecting data from a variety of sources, including cloud logs, network traffic, and endpoint activity. This data is then analyzed using signatures, machine learning, and other techniques to identify potential threats. When a threat is detected, CDR platforms enable security teams to take a variety of actions, such as isolating the affected system, blocking malicious traffic, or launching an investigation.

What Does Cloud Detection & Response Enable?

There are many benefits to using CDR, including:

• Improved security posture: CDR can help organizations identify and respond to threats more quickly and effectively, which can help to improve their overall security posture.
• Faster response times: CDR can automate many of the tasks involved in incident response, which can help organizations respond to threats more quickly.
• Reduced alert fatigue: CDR can prioritize alerts based on criticality, which can help to reduce alert fatigue for security teams.
• Increased compliance: CDR can help organizations comply with security regulations, such as PCI DSS and HIPAA, which mandate speedy investigations of incidents.
  
  

Cloud Detection and Response Metrics for SOC Teams

Two key metrics are Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR) - the faster an incident is detected and resolved, the lower the eventual impact.

• Mean Time to Detect (MTTD): This measures how long it takes to identify a potential security threat in the cloud. A lower MTTD indicates a faster response.
• Mean Time to Respond (MTTR): This metric tracks how long it takes to resolve a security incident after detection. A lower MTTR signifies a more efficient response process.

It is also important to track the rate of false positive alerts generated by your cloud security tools. Too many false positives waste time and resources. Alerts should be investigated with as much automation as possible, and the rate of false positives should be minimized over time through tuning security tools and processes.

More cloud-specific metrics include:

• Cloud Telemetry Coverage: This metric assesses how well your security tools monitor activity across all your cloud services, accounts, and subscriptions. Strong coverage ensures you don't miss threats in any corner of your cloud environment.
• Cloud Incident Investigation Time: This metric focuses specifically on the investigation time for cloud-related security incidents. Ideally, you want to see a decrease in investigation time over time, indicating a growing expertise in handling cloud security issues.

How Cado Helps

The Cado platform natively integrates with best of breed cloud detection technologies to automatically collect incident data and enable security teams to quickly investigate and respond.

There are 3 core components to any CDR solution include:

• Detection: Detection is the initial trigger that something malicious or suspicious has occurred in your cloud environment. Cado seamlessly plugs into your existing cloud ecosystem including any combination of AWS, Azure, GCP, container-based, serverless, and SaaS resources. With integrations into all of the various detection mechanisms within those environments, the Cado Security platform quickly understands where events are occurring. 
• Investigation: While detection is important, it’s only the first step. To really understand what is happening, security teams need to conduct an investigation. This is a critical step that enables response. An investigation often requires pulling in forensic data and additional context, normalizing data across a wide range of systems, and conducting more advanced detections based on threat intel feeds and rules customized for your environment. The Cado Security platform applies automation to make many of these investigation steps simple, fast, and efficient, enabling security teams to quickly understand the full scope of the incident. 
• Response: Once the investigation is complete, security teams are able to remediate an incident. The Cado Security platform enables security teams to automate response actions or perform manual response directly from the platform. This includes isolating IAM roles, network connections and systems.

How Customers use Cado for Cloud Detection & Response (CDR)

A number of our customers use Cado for Cloud Detection and Response, with a typical workflow as follows:

• Detection technologies such as GuardDuty, Wiz, and XDR are used to identify potential threats in the cloud environment.
• Cado is used to automatically collect and investigate these incidents, providing security teams with the information they need to respond. Either through native Detection Integrations or API integrations.
• Processing and analysis are sent to a messaging or ticketing system, such as Slack or ServiceNow, to update the SOC team and streamline the investigation process.

Learn More

By automating and streamlining the end-to-end incident response process – from automated detection to data processing and analysis, Cado empowers security teams to exponentially reduce the time it takes to identify, investigate, and respond to an incident.

If you want to see how Cado delivers Cloud Detection and Response (CDR), schedule a demo with our team.