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The Cloud Native Experts

"The Cloud Native Experts" at Aqua Security specialize in cloud technology and cybersecurity. They focus on advancing cloud-native applications, offering insights into containers, Kubernetes, and cloud infrastructure. Their work revolves around enhancing security in cloud environments and developing solutions to new challenges.

Rani Osnat

Rani is the SVP of Strategy at Aqua. Rani has worked in enterprise software companies more than 25 years, spanning project management, product management and marketing, including a decade as VP of marketing for innovative startups in the cyber-security and cloud arenas. Previously Rani was also a management consultant in the London office of Booz & Co. He holds an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. Rani is an avid wine geek, and a slightly less avid painter and electronic music composer.

Amit Sheps

Amit is the Director of Technical Product Marketing at Aqua. With an illustrious career spanning renowned companies such as CyberX (acquired by Microsoft) and F5, he has played an instrumental role in fortifying manufacturing floors and telecom networks. Focused on product management and marketing, Amit's expertise lies in the art of transforming applications into cloud-native powerhouses. Amit is an avid runner who relishes the tranquility of early morning runs. You may very well spot him traversing the urban landscape, reveling in the quietude of the city streets before the world awakes.

Amit Sheps

Lena Fuks

Lena Fuks is a Product Marketing Manager at Aqua. With a background in public relations for technology companies, Lena now writes blogs, whitepapers, and articles to help people understand the value of Aqua. She is passionate about simplifying complex things and engaging with audiences through storytelling. In her free time, Lena enjoys working out and watching beautiful Mediterranean sunsets.

Erin Stephan

Erin Stephan is the Principal Product Marketer for Aqua's Cloud Security portfolio. Erin has more than 10 years of product marketing experience in data protection and cybersecurity. She enjoys connecting with people, helping to articulate their challenges, and bringing products and solutions to the market that help solve those challenges. In her free time, you can find her catching a flight to a new city, shopping for new home décor, or taking a spin class.

Articles by The Cloud Native Experts

Cloud Application Security: Top 10 Threats and How to Stop Them

Application security in the cloud differs from securing on-premises applications, and introduces new challenges, over and above traditional application security concerns.

Cloud Native Glossary

Welcome to our cloud native glossary. Below you will find links to key concepts around Linux, container and container registries, Kubernetes, package management, IDEs, and CI/CD.

Application Modernization: The Basics and 7 Tips for Success

Cloud Native: Principles, Architecture, and Technology

Learn about the vision of cloud native applications and how design principles, architecture, and technology are making it a reality for production applications.

Cloud Native Architecture: 6 Principles for Success

Discover the 5 principles that will help make your cloud native architecture a success, and discover the pros and cons of cloud native development.

Open Policy Agent: Authorization in a Cloud Native World

Learn about Open Policy Agent (OPA) and how you can use it to control authorization, admission, and other policies in cloud native environments, with a focus on K8s.

What Is a Microservices Architecture?

Learn the basics of microservices architectures, pros and cons of microservices, and tips for building a successful microservices architecture.

Cloud Native Applications: A Practical Guide

Learn about the cloud native paradigm, types of cloud native infrastructure, cultural changes introduced by cloud native, and cloud native challenges

Cloud Native Landscape: The 6 Categories in Depth

Learn about the Cloud Native Landscape, which lists hundreds of cloud native technologies in six broad categories.

What Is Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)?

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a design pattern where services are provided to other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network. The basic idea of SOA is to allow easy integration of various services into new applications, providing a flexible framework for application development.

What Is Web Application Security?

Web application security refers to the strategies and practices dedicated to protecting web applications from potential threats that can compromise their security. It is a branch of information security that particularly deals with the security aspects of websites, web applications, mobile applications, and web services.

What Is the Principle of Least Privilege?

The principle of least privilege, or PoLP, is an important concept in cybersecurity and information technology. It suggests that any system, user, or process should have access to only the absolute minimum privileges necessary to perform its function or task. This principle is integral to limiting the potential damage that could occur if a system or user were compromised.

What Is Threat Detection and Response (TDR)?

Threat detection and response is a cybersecurity strategy that involves the identification and mitigation of potential cyber threats. It is a proactive method used by organizations to protect their data and systems from cyber attacks.

What Is Threat Hunting?

Threat hunting is a proactive and iterative approach to detecting threats in a network that have gone unnoticed by automated security solutions. This process involves human-led investigations where analysts, equipped with the necessary tools and knowledge, manually hunt for advanced threats within an environment.

What Is the AI Executive Order (EO 14110)?

AI Executive Order, also known as EO 14110, was issued by the U.S. government on October 30, 2023. It outlines a comprehensive framework for the development, deployment, and governance of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies within federal agencies and across the nation. It aims to promote AI innovation while ensuring that AI systems are developed and used in a manner that is ethical, secure, and respects privacy and civil rights.

How Fileless Attacks Work and How to Detect and Prevent Them

What Is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is a powerful open-source orchestration tool, designed to help you manage microservices and containerized applications across a distributed cluster of computing nodes.

Managing Containers in Kubernetes

Kubernetes and Docker collaborate in container management. Docker creates containers while Kubernetes handles their deployment and scaling.

Top 10 Cyber Security Threats and How to Prevent Them

Cybersecurity threats encompass any malicious activity aimed at compromising the integrity, confidentiality, or availability of information. These threats range from attacks on network infrastructure to the theft of individual data and can be carried out by a variety of actors, from individual hackers to organized crime groups and state-sponsored entities.

Arbitrary Code Execution: 6 Attack Examples and Mitigation Steps

Arbitrary code execution (ACE) refers to an attacker’s ability to run code of their choice on a target machine or process. It allows the attacker to gain unauthorized access or perform actions beyond the intent of the application's creators, potentially leading to data theft, corruption, or system compromise.

AI Attacks: Understanding, Identifying and Mitigating Attacks against AI Systems

In some respects, cybersecurity attacks that involve AI systems are similar to other, more traditional forms of attack. In other respects, they are completely unique threats that call for novel, innovative cybersecurity protections.

Prompt Injection

Generative AI brings incredible new capabilities to businesses. But it also creates entirely new types of security risks – such as prompt injection, which threat actors can employ to abuse applications and services that leverage generative AI.

Malware Analysis: Static vs. Dynamic and 4 Critical Best Practices

Malware analysis is the process of examining malicious software to understand its functionality, behavior, and potential impact aiming to neutralize it or prevent future attacks.

CNAPP vs. CSPM: 5 Key Differences

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is a tool that continuously monitors and manages the security posture of cloud environments. It identifies and remediates risks associated with cloud resource configurations and compliance standards.

CIEM: 7 Key Capabilities and How to Choose a CIEM Solution

Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) is a cloud security model that provides visibility over entitlements in the cloud environment.

What Is Container Security?

As of 2024, more than sixty percent of businesses are using Kubernetes, and twenty percent deploy at least 5,000 individual containers. At most other organizations, the total number of containers in operation is in at least the hundreds.

A Guide to Container Security Tools for 2024

At a high level, all container security tools do the same basic thing: They help to identify and mitigate security risks in container-based applications and environments. But exactly how they do this, and the specific types of container security features the tools offer, can vary widely.

What Is a Docker Container?

The raw deal on Docker: architecture, concepts, basics, industry opinions, all the way to ninja topics like Docker Swarm and Docker Networking.

What Is a Virtual Machine (VM)?

A Virtual Machine (VM) is a software emulation of a physical computer, running an operating system and applications as if they were on physical hardware. VMs operate based on hypervisor software that allows multiple VMs to run on a single physical server, with each VM completely isolated from the others.

Containerized Applications: Components, Use Cases, and Best Practices

What Are Microservices?

A microservices architecture is a method of developing software systems that are structured as a collection of small, autonomous services. Each service is self-contained, focuses on a single business capability, and communicates with other services through well-defined APIs. This design allows for enhanced modularity, makes the application easier to understand, develop, and test, and makes its architecture more resilient to changing requirements.

A Guide to Managing Docker CVEs

Docker, a platform for building and running containers, offers plenty of benefits, like the ability to run applications with less resource overhead than conventional virtualization and to move apps easily between systems.

Understand Docker Monitoring – And Its Relationship to Container Security

It's no exaggeration to say that Docker, the open source container platform, has revolutionized the way organizations develop and deploy applications. While there is no way to count exactly how many applications run inside Docker containers today, it's a safe bet that they number in the millions. That's why monitoring Docker has become so important for the typical organization. Without effective Docker monitoring tools and practices in place, it's impossible to guarantee that Docker-based workloads will perform adequately and operate securely.

Docker CIS Benchmark: Best Practices in Brief

Get the gist of the Docker CIS Benchmark recommendations for host configuration, Docker Daemon configuration and more, and learn to automate security testing.

What Is Docker Architecture?

Learn about the components of the Docker architecture: Docker Host, Network and Storage components, and the Docker Registry/Hub.

What Is Docker Networking? A Practical Guide

Learn about Docker network types, how containers communicate, common networking operations, and more.

What Is a Docker Registry?

Learn about Docker Registries, DockerHub, other public registries, and private registries

What Is the Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC)?

If you're wondering what it means to integrate security into the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) or how to implement a Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC), this article is for you. Below, we unpack the meaning of SSDLC, explain why the concept is important, walk through how it works and discuss best practices for SSDLC success.

Software Supply Chain Attacks: 6 Examples and 6 Defensive Strategies

Supply chain attacks occur when a malicious actor infiltrates the development or distribution process of software to insert malicious code into a product or service.

Dependency Confusion Attack

CI/CD Security: Threats, Tools, and Best Practices

Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery, or CI/CD, is a great way to develop applications efficiently based on a DevOps approach. But by default, CI/CD leaves out one absolutely critical consideration: Security.

What Is Secrets Management? Challenges and Best Practices

Are you keeping your organization's software secrets secret? If not, you're likely setting the business up for attack. Poor secrets management can open the door to a variety of threats, such as stolen login credentials and the exfiltration of sensitive data. Furthermore, failing to manage secrets properly can lead to unauthorized access to critical systems and significant financial and reputational damage. It can also result in compliance violations with heavy fines. It can also result in compliance violations with heavy fines.

Jenkins Security: How it Works & Best practices

Yarn vs. NPM: Which Package Manager You Should Choose, and Why?

Top 5 Open Source Vulnerability Management Tools

Discover the key features of vulnerability management tools and meet five of the most popular and feature-rich open source solutions.

Vulnerability Scanning: Types, Tools, and Importance

Vulnerability is to cybersecurity what security screening is to an airport: A critical way of detecting core risks. Scanning software for vulnerabilities won't necessarily uncover every potential threat or weakness that could lead to a security breach, just as X-raying luggage at the airport doesn't offer a complete guarantee against threats. However, these practices are effective at catching many risks before malicious actors are able to take advantage of them.

Open Source Vulnerability Scanning: Methods and Top 5 Tools

Learn how open source vulnerability scanning works and discover tools that can help you identify and remediate vulnerabilities in OSS components and containers.

Vulnerability Remediation - Challenges, Process & Automation

Finding vulnerabilities is one thing - remediating vulnerabilities can be quite another. In fact, in some respects, vulnerability remediation is much more complicated and challenging than simply discovering them.

What is a Vulnerability Scanner?

A vulnerability scanner is a tool that continuously monitors computers, networks or applications to identify security vulnerabilities. The scanner compares the findings in the network or application against a database of known vulnerabilities to determine potential exploits.

What Is Risk-Based Vulnerability Management?

In a world where security researchers discover more than 2,000 new vulnerabilities every month, it’s easy to feel like you’re drowning in vulnerability alerts – and to struggle to address them quickly. In fact, according to a 2023 study, it takes organizations between 88 and 208 days, on average, to patch vulnerabilities after discovering them.

Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange (VEX) - Definition & Use Cases

Finding vulnerabilities using a vulnerability scanner is one thing. Determining whether a vulnerability you've discovered actually presents a risk for your specific application and environment is quite another. It often happens that a vulnerability is not exploitable under a particular configuration, which means the vulnerability doesn't pose a serious risk.

What Is Generative AI Security?

Generative AI security involves protecting algorithms and data in AI systems that can generate new content. Protecting these systems ensures they function as intended and prevents misuse. Key aspects include protecting the AI's integrity, ensuring generated content is reliable and secure, and preventing unauthorized access or manipulation.

Why Is It Important to Secure Large Language Models (LLM)?

A Large Language Model (LLM) is a complex machine learning model designed to understand, generate, and interpret human language. Built on neural networks using the Transformer architecture, these models learn from vast amounts of text data, making them capable of producing text that closely mimics human writing styles and patterns.

DevSecOps: 8 Essential Elements for Your DevSecOps Program

Learn about the 8 elements you need to implement DevSecOps in your organization, and best practices to take your DevSecOps program to the next level.

Putting DevOps Security Into Practice: 10 DevSecOps Best Practices

Once upon a time, the main focus of IT engineers was on system administration. Then, the introduction of DevOps in the 2000s extended the focus of many IT engineers to include the entire software delivery pipeline. Even more recently, DevSecOps came along and added security to the mix – with the result that people who once would have thought of themselves as SysAdmins now have a leading role to play in software security, too.

DevSecOps vs SecDevOps: Key Differences

At first glance, the difference between DevSecOps and SecDevOps may seem purely semantic, or the result of a simple variation on spelling. But in reality, DevSecOps and SecDevOps refer to different, albeit related, concepts. Each term also implies different priorities and practices.

What Is Threat Modeling?

Threat modeling is a structured approach used to identify, quantify, and address the security risks associated with an application. It is a vital part of the design process for any system that handles sensitive data.

eBPF Linux: How It Works, Use Cases & Best Practices

eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) is a Linux kernel technology that allows for dynamic and efficient tracing of various system events.

Cloud DevOps: 3 Ways DevOps and the Cloud Work Together

See how DevOps and cloud computing are better together: DevOps using cloud infrastructure, CloudSecOps, and DevOps as a Service.

Understanding DevOps Tools and Breaking Down the Top 10

Discover the main categories of DevOps tools, including CI, CD and DevOps security, and learn about the top 10 tools used by DevOps organizations worldwide.

GitOps vs DevOps: Differences and Why They are Better Together

Understand the GitOps vs DevOps discussion - what is GitOps, how it is different than DevOps, and how GitOps helps DevOps teams solve deployment challenges.

What Is Secure Code Review? Process, Tools, and Best Practices

Secure code review is the systematic examination of software source code, with the goal of identifying and fixing security vulnerabilities.

Infrastructure as Code and DevOps: DevOps Automation Reloaded

Learn how Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is making DevOps better - enabling faster, safer, more predictable release cycles.

What Is Open Source Security?

Open source security involves practices and technology measures to protect open source software from vulnerabilities and attacks. It includes securing the software code, infrastructure, and data against unauthorized access and threats. Given open source software's public nature, and the availability of source code to attackers, security becomes crucial to prevent exploitation by malicious actors.

SecDevOps in Your Organization: A Practical Guide

Learn the difference between SecDevOps and DevSecOps, discover challenges and solutions, and get critical best practices for implementing SecDevOps in your organization

What Are AI Workloads?

AI workloads refer to the tasks and processes that artificial intelligence systems perform. These can range from data processing and machine learning model training to real-time inference and decision-making. AI workloads are typically classified into several categories:

7 Dimensions of Cloud Security, Top 10 Risks and How to Defend

Cloud computing is becoming the default option for enterprise IT. 65% of IT decision makers say that cloud computing is the default option for new computing projects. At the same time, cloud security concerns are mounting, with 82% of all security breaches involving data stored in the cloud. In a recent survey, 27% of organizations have experienced a public cloud security incident

Top 7 Cloud Security Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Cloud Security Tools

What Is Code to Cloud Security?

Code to cloud is a cloud native security approach that has two primary aspects: identifying security issues in code and preventing them from reaching the cloud, and identifying security issues in cloud deployments and tracing them back to the code.

Cloud Protection: Why, How & 6 Essential Technologies

Cloud Security Frameworks

10 Cloud Security Standards You Must Know About

Cloud Computing Security Architecture: 5 Key Components

A cloud security architecture is a broad set of policies, technologies, controls, and services that protect data, applications, and the associated infrastructure of cloud computing. It's designed to provide a secure environment where business-critical operations can be executed without the risk of data loss or leakage.

Cloud Security Assessment: 8-Step Process and Checklist

Cloud security assessment is the process of evaluating the security posture of a cloud computing environment, such as a cloud service provider's infrastructure, platform, or software services. The goal is to identify and assess security risks and vulnerabilities in the cloud environment, as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of the security controls and measures that have been implemented to mitigate those risks.

Cloud Workloads: Types, Common Tasks, and Security Best Practices

A cloud workload refers to the computing resources and tasks that are required to run an application or service in a cloud computing environment. This can include resources such as virtual machines, storage, and networking, as well as the software and applications that run on those resources.

Private Cloud vs. Public Cloud: 7 Key Differences and How to Choose

AWS GovCloud: Basics & How It Compares to Azure & GCP

Understanding Cloud Workload Protection (CWP)

Securing modern environments would be simpler if the security tools and techniques that work well for on-prem workloads were also effective in the cloud. But in many cases, they're not. Cloud workloads are different in key respects from traditional, on-prem workloads.

What Is a Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP)?

Cloud workloads face unique security threats – which is why organizations that deploy applications and data to the cloud need unique security solutions. One way to address this requirement is through a Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP). Although CWPPs don't manage all types of cloud security needs, they are one key ingredient in a modern cloud security strategy.

Cloud Workload Security: Risks, Controls, and 10 Best Practices

Learn how to secure cloud workloads and prevent risks like misconfiguration, social engineering and malware.

Google Cloud Security: How It Works and 10 Security Best Practices

Multi Cloud Security: 10 Critical Best Practices

Discover 5 multi cloud security considerations and 5 tips for improving multi cloud security in your organization

8 Cloud Compliance Standards & 7 Steps to Achieving Compliance

Cloud compliance ensures cloud services and data comply with guidelines and regulations relevant to the company that owns or operates those services.

Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA)

Financial institutions are a prime target for cyberattacks. According to the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, the finance industry has the second-highest frequency of cyber attacks (after manufacturing), with 18.5% of all cyber attacks targeted at financial and insurance organizations.

How AWS PCI Compliance Works & 6 Customer Responsibilities

What is AWS PCI Compliance?

Azure Compliance: Standards, Tools, and 6 Critical Best Practices

Azure compliance refers to the adherence of Azure services to compliance standards, ensuring that data stored in Azure cloud is managed and protected in accordance with government regulations and industry standards. Microsoft Azure provides a set of compliance offerings, including certifications, attestations, and frameworks that aid organizations in achieving compliance.

What Is FedRAMP Compliance?

FedRAMP, or the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, is a government-wide program that offers a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud services. This compliance program was designed to protect the data of U.S. federal agencies when they utilize cloud-based services.

What Is FedRAMP High Impact Level?

FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program), is a US government program that specifies how cloud services should undergo security assessment, authorization, and monitoring before they can be used by US government agencies. FedRAMP has three impact levels—Low, Moderate, and High—indicating the level of security required by cloud services for different government uses.

AWS FedRAMP: How AWS Complies with FedRAMP for U.S. Government Agencies

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) provides a comprehensive guide for assessing, authorizing, and continuously monitoring cloud products and services to ensure they are suitable for use by the U.S. federal government. This article explores how AWS aligns with FedRAMP’s rigorous standards and what this means for government agencies and other entities leveraging AWS's cloud services.