Cloud environments are susceptible to a wide variety of cyberattacks, making them difficult to secure. Some cyberattacks are easier to detect than others, so a priority in cloud security is having adequate detection and response systems in place to mitigate them. Unauthorized cryptomining has become a prevalent threat in recent years, especially in cloud environments where it can be harder to detect.

Kata Containers is an open source project that seeks to enhance security for containers by isolating them in lightweight VMs. Each Kata Container runs with the speed and flexibility of standard containers, and it easily integrates with common container management software—including Docker and Kubernetes.

As of August 2023, only 3 out of 23 US government agencies were compliant with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requirements for log management and security observability. These requirements are outlined in M-21-31, a 2021 memorandum that was issued following Executive Order 14028 on improving national cybersecurity. Until all of these agencies implement the new requirements, the federal government’s ability to fully detect, investigate, and remediate cybersecurity threats will be constrained.

Network security services like Google Cloud Armor enable you to filter incoming traffic so that you can prevent attacks from overwhelming your system or from reaching critical components of your application. However, these services often handle threats automatically, making it difficult to gain visibility into attempted security breaches.

Mitigating application vulnerabilities throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC) is critical—and challenging, especially as applications rely more and more on third-party, open source software (OSS). With this type of architecture, teams often don’t know exactly where vulnerabilities exist in their code, which of those vulnerabilities are actively exposed in production services, and which vulnerabilities are more critical to address than others.

Editor’s note: Jeremy Garcia, VP of Technical Community and Open Source at Datadog, explains why fostering an organization-wide culture and practice of DevSecOps is essential for deploying resilient, secure applications and services. Over the past decade, DevSecOps has become a popular buzzword in the tech industry.

Applications frequently need to provide authentication credentials to gain access to cloud services and other resources. However, these credentials present a security risk because they are notoriously difficult to keep out of code. According to a GitGuardian report, 10 million credentials were publicly committed to GitHub in 2022. Leaked credentials such as these are a major cause of data breaches and account takeovers.

Azure App Service is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) commonly used to deploy applications and APIs, as well as functions, mobile apps, and more. It provides flexibility and reliability when deploying new applications and infrastructure, but it also introduces new security risks to your system. In particular, reduced visibility into the infrastructure and deployment of your application leads to a greater chance of application vulnerabilities being exploited by an attacker.

Protecting sensitive data from the threat of exposure is a non-negotiable business imperative for organizations, especially those in highly regulated sectors like government and healthcare. To help organizations keep their data secure, the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) developed a set of requirements for the hardware and software components responsible for data encryption.

In order to help organizations more effectively secure their cloud environments, we are making changes to our Cloud SIEM product. As of December 4, Datadog has introduced a new offering in Cloud SIEM: Cloud SIEM 15-Months Retention, which automatically stores logs for 15 months after ingestion.