CloudKnox Security, a startup with venture capital funding, is being bought by Microsoft. The software giant announced that it is acquiring CloudKnox to reduce the risk of breaches experienced by enterprises in public cloud environments.
Microsoft’s multi-cloud capabilities are going to get a boost at a time when its fiercest rivals are also focusing on the same issues.
A significant number of cyberattacks that happen on cloud environments leverage stolen user credentials. Without these passwords and login details, getting into a secure cloud environment is harder. Access is what CloudKnox controls to keep malicious actors out of places they should not access.
CloudKnox
CloudKnox prevents attacks by minimizing the attack “surface area”. The platform created by the startup scans an organization’s public cloud environment to index all active user accounts.
It then recommends which ones should be removed (unused accounts) to thwart hackers. The fewer the accounts active at any given time, the easier it is to stop hackers from stealing credentials or breaching the environments.
CloudKnox can also detect when a user has more components of a cloud environment than is needed and recommends revoking the access of some users to certain parts of the infrastructure, leaving only those who must access those resources.
What Microsoft gains
With CloudKnox, Microsoft will have the capabilities to manage users’ access to resources and permissions. Like employees, cloud resources can also be fitted with permissions, to prevent them from interacting with malicious technology assets.
Managing permissions for assets is harder than managing employee access since an organization can have hundreds of thousands of components.
CloudKnox aims to remove the unnecessary and broad permissions set in place, to tighten just who can access a public cloud environment and what they can access. This way, permissions are left in those who need them and those who understand security protocols.
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