A cloud based vulnerability scanner is an automated security tool that detects weaknesses in your cloud infrastructure, applications, and configurations before attackers can exploit them.
What is a cloud based vulnerability scanner?
- A specialized security tool designed to identify vulnerabilities in cloud environments
- Continuously monitors cloud assets, configurations, and applications
- Detects misconfigurations, weak credentials, and software vulnerabilities
- Provides remediation guidance and prioritizes risks based on severity
- Integrates with major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
With over 65 new vulnerabilities finded daily and attackers exploiting them in as little as 12 days, traditional security approaches can’t keep pace with cloud environments. Cloud misconfigurations have become one of the leading causes of data breaches, making specialized cloud vulnerability scanners essential for modern businesses.
Unlike traditional on-premises scanners, cloud based vulnerability scanners are designed specifically to address the dynamic nature of cloud environments. They operate under the shared responsibility model, where cloud providers secure the infrastructure while you’re responsible for securing your applications, data, and configurations.
“We went from years’ worth of pain to full visibility in a single afternoon,” reports one Director of Cybersecurity, highlighting how effective cloud scanning solutions can transform security operations.
Modern cloud vulnerability scanners don’t just identify known threats—they provide context around risks, prioritize remediation efforts, and integrate with your existing security workflows to create a continuous security feedback loop.
Whether you’re running a single cloud platform or managing a complex multi-cloud environment, finding the right cloud vulnerability scanner can mean the difference between proactive security and responding to breaches after the damage is done.
Understanding Cloud-Based Vulnerability Scanners
Remember when security was all about firewalls and antivirus software? Those days are long gone. As organizations have moved to the cloud, the security landscape has dramatically shifted. Where we once had complete visibility over our on-premises systems, we now face the beautiful chaos of cloud environments – dynamic, distributed, and decidedly different.
What is a Cloud-Based Vulnerability Scanner?
A cloud based vulnerability scanner is your digital security guard, specifically designed for the unique challenges of cloud environments. Unlike traditional scanners built for static networks, these specialized tools are cloud-natives themselves.
Think of traditional scanners as security guards who know how to patrol a single building with defined entry points. Cloud scanners, on the other hand, are more like adaptive security teams that can monitor a constantly changing campus where buildings appear and disappear daily.
These modern scanners are built to handle the cloud’s unique characteristics – resources that scale up and down automatically, containerized applications, serverless functions, and resources scattered across multiple providers. They send carefully crafted probes to your internet-facing systems and analyze the responses, looking for everything from outdated software to insecure API implementations.
As one CISO put it: “Intruder’s Cloudbot is a game changer for any organization with a complex cloud environment. The automated scanning and notification features are invaluable.”
Perhaps most importantly, cloud scanners understand the shared responsibility model – that delicate balance where some security aspects are handled by your provider while others remain squarely on your shoulders.
Why Cloud Vulnerability Scanners are Essential
Let’s face reality: cloud misconfigurations have become one of the leading causes of data breaches. A simple permission setting, an overlooked access control, or an improperly secured API can create vulnerabilities that attackers are all too ready to exploit.
The security landscape moves at lightning speed. With over 65 new vulnerabilities finded daily and hackers exploiting them in as little as 12 days, the manual “scan-when-we-remember” approach is dangerously outdated. Your cloud environment deserves better – it needs continuous, automated protection.
What makes cloud environments particularly challenging to secure? Several factors come into play:
Rapid change transforms your environment daily as resources are created, modified, and destroyed. Shared responsibility divides security duties between you and your provider, creating potential gaps. Multiple stakeholders from development, operations, and security all influence your cloud security posture, sometimes working at cross-purposes. Complex configurations offer countless options that affect security, and distributed resources spread across regions and providers add another layer of complexity.
One Director of Information Security shared this sobering experience: “With Surface Monitoring, we found subdomains we didn’t know we had. Not only would we likely not have found these subdomains, but we also wouldn’t have known about them until someone did something really nasty on one of them and held us to ransom over it.”
By implementing a cloud based vulnerability scanner, you gain a vigilant ally that continuously monitors your environment, automatically detects new assets, and identifies security issues before attackers can exploit them. This proactive approach isn’t just nice to have – it’s essential for maintaining security in today’s rapidly evolving cloud landscapes.
For more comprehensive protection, consider exploring Vulnerability Risk Management Services that combine scanning with expert analysis and remediation support.
Key Features to Look For in a Cloud-Based Vulnerability Scanner
Choosing the right cloud based vulnerability scanner can feel overwhelming with so many options available. Let’s cut through the noise and focus on what really matters. These essential features will ensure your organization stays protected in today’s complex cloud environments.
Comprehensive Coverage Across Cloud Environments
Think of your cloud environment as a neighborhood. A good scanner doesn’t just check the front doors—it examines every possible entry point.
The best cloud based vulnerability scanners provide complete visibility across your entire cloud ecosystem. They work seamlessly with AWS, Azure, GCP, and other providers—crucial since nearly 80% of organizations now use multiple clouds. This multi-cloud support eliminates blind spots that could leave you vulnerable.
Effective scanners automatically find all your cloud assets, even ones you might not know exist. As one security professional shared with us, “We found subdomains we didn’t know we had”—a surprisingly common revelation when implementing comprehensive scanning.
Beyond just finding assets, your scanner should examine infrastructure configurations, virtual machines, containers, serverless functions, web applications, APIs, and access management settings. This thorough approach ensures no vulnerable component goes unnoticed.
A cloud architect at a financial organization recently told us, “The unified view of vulnerabilities across all our cloud platforms has been transformative. We now have visibility into risks we simply couldn’t see before.” That’s the power of comprehensive coverage.
Integration with Cloud Platforms and DevOps Tools
Security shouldn’t slow down your development process—it should improve it. The best cloud based vulnerability scanners integrate naturally with your existing workflows and tools.
Look for scanners that connect directly to AWS Security Hub, Azure Security Center, and similar native security services. These integrations create a unified security picture rather than isolated reports.
Your scanner should also offer robust APIs for automation and custom integration. This capability lets you pull vulnerability data into existing dashboards and security tools, creating a single source of truth.
The real magic happens when scanning becomes part of your CI/CD pipeline. By embedding security checks into development, you catch vulnerabilities before they reach production—saving time, money, and potential embarrassment.
One CEO explained their journey: “We partnered with a cloud vulnerability scanning solution to solve a critical need for our business: continuous, effective, and automated vulnerability scanning. We trust tools like OpenVAS, Zap and Nmap, but didn’t have the time to automate them.” This highlights how the right integration can transform theoretical security into practical protection.
Real-Time Continuous Scanning and Automated Updates
Cloud environments aren’t static—they’re constantly changing. One-and-done scanning simply doesn’t cut it anymore.
Modern cloud based vulnerability scanners operate continuously, monitoring your environment in real-time. When new vulnerabilities emerge (which happens daily), your scanner should automatically update its detection capabilities without manual intervention.
Real-time alerts ensure you know immediately when critical issues arise. This timely notification can mean the difference between a quick fix and a costly breach.
Change detection is equally important. Every time someone modifies your cloud environment—adding a new service, changing configurations, or deploying new code—your scanner should automatically evaluate these changes for potential security impacts.
As one Operations and Security Manager enthusiastically shared, “Every time I log in, it absolutely amazes me how much work has been done on the interface and new integrations. It is a fantastic group of tools.” This ongoing evolution keeps your defenses current against emerging threats.
Prioritization and Remediation Support
Finding vulnerabilities is only half the battle—knowing which ones to fix first is equally crucial.
The reality is that most scans uncover hundreds or even thousands of potential issues. Without proper prioritization, security teams waste time on low-impact problems while critical vulnerabilities remain unaddressed.
Effective cloud based vulnerability scanners use risk-based prioritization that considers multiple factors: vulnerability severity, asset importance, exploitability, and potential business impact. This context helps you focus resources where they’ll make the biggest difference.
Beyond just identifying problems, good scanners provide clear remediation guidance—specific instructions on how to fix each issue. Some advanced solutions even offer automated remediation for common problems, further reducing your team’s workload.
A security executive summed it up perfectly: “We found the solution which gives us much needed actionable insight into our entire infrastructure’s security risk.” That’s the ultimate goal—actionable intelligence, not just more alerts.
At Concertium, we build these essential features into our Vulnerability Scanning and Remediation services. We understand that effective cloud security isn’t just about finding problems—it’s about solving them efficiently while keeping your business moving forward.
Types of Cloud-Based Vulnerability Scanners: Agent-Based vs Agentless
When shopping for a cloud based vulnerability scanner, you’ll quickly encounter one of the most fundamental choices: should you go with an agent-based or agentless solution? This isn’t just a technical distinction—it’s a decision that will shape your entire security approach.
Agent-Based Cloud Vulnerability Scanners
Think of agent-based scanners as having your own security guards stationed inside each building. These solutions require installing small software agents directly on your cloud resources—virtual machines, containers, and other assets you want to protect.
Once installed, these agents become your eyes and ears inside each system. They continuously monitor from within, collecting detailed information about configurations, installed software, patch levels, and potential vulnerabilities. This data travels securely back to a central management platform where it’s analyzed and presented in an intuitive dashboard.
The depth of visibility is where agent-based solutions truly shine. Because they’re operating from inside your systems with appropriate permissions, they can see things that external scanners simply can’t. They detect file-level changes, monitor process behavior, and identify vulnerabilities that require authentication to find.
“Agent-based scanning gives us the deepest visibility into our critical systems,” shared one security engineer we work with, “but the deployment and maintenance overhead is significant. We reserve this approach for our most sensitive workloads.”
That’s the trade-off—while agents provide continuous, real-time monitoring even when systems go offline, they do require installation and maintenance across your environment. They also consume some system resources, which might be a consideration for performance-sensitive workloads. Not every operating system or container type may have compatible agents available, which can create coverage gaps in diverse environments.
Agentless Cloud Vulnerability Scanners
Agentless scanners take a completely different approach. Instead of placing security guards inside each building, they’re more like sophisticated surveillance systems that can see inside from a distance.
These solutions leverage cloud provider APIs, management interfaces, and network protocols to gather information without requiring any software installation on your target systems. They connect remotely, collect configuration data, perform network-based assessments, and analyze cloud settings—all from outside the systems themselves.
The simplicity of deployment is what makes agentless scanning so attractive. There’s nothing to install or maintain on your cloud resources, which means you can quickly scan large environments with minimal setup. One Director of Cybersecurity told us, “We went from years’ worth of pain to full visibility in a single afternoon,” highlighting just how quickly these solutions can be implemented.
Since agentless scanners don’t place any software on your systems, they have zero impact on resource consumption. Management is centralized and straightforward, without the complexity of distributing and updating agents across your environment.
However, this approach does come with limitations. Without direct system access, agentless scanners may miss certain system-level vulnerabilities that require local presence to detect. They typically provide point-in-time snapshots rather than continuous monitoring, and they may generate more network traffic during scanning operations.
Choosing the Right Approach
Many of our clients at Concertium find that a hybrid approach works best—using agentless scanning for broad coverage across their entire cloud footprint, while deploying agents on their most critical or sensitive systems where deeper visibility is essential.
When helping clients choose, we consider several key factors:
Environment size and complexity often points toward agentless scanning for initial coverage of large, diverse clouds. A financial services client with thousands of virtual machines found that starting with agentless scanning gave them quick visibility they couldn’t achieve with agents alone.
Security requirements might necessitate agent-based scanning for systems handling sensitive data or subject to strict compliance mandates. For healthcare clients dealing with protected health information, the deeper visibility of agents often proves essential.
Operational constraints like performance sensitivity might favor agentless approaches for certain workloads. We’ve seen this particularly with database systems where even minimal resource consumption could impact performance.
Resource availability matters too—your team’s capacity to manage agent deployment and maintenance should influence your decision. Smaller security teams often start with agentless scanning to avoid the operational overhead.
Integration needs with your existing security tools and processes can also guide the decision. Some security orchestration platforms work better with one approach than the other.
At Concertium, we help clients steer these choices based on their specific cloud environment, security requirements, and operational constraints. Our expertise with both technologies ensures you get comprehensive vulnerability management custom to your unique needs—whether that means agent-based, agentless, or a strategic combination of both approaches.
Evaluating Cloud-Based Vulnerability Scanners
Choosing the right cloud based vulnerability scanner isn’t just about features and technical specs. It’s about finding a solution that grows with your business, feels intuitive to your team, helps you stay compliant, and delivers real value for your investment. Let’s explore what really matters when evaluating these critical security tools.
Scalability and Performance
Cloud environments are living, breathing entities that often expand faster than we expect. Your vulnerability scanner needs to keep up without breaking a sweat.
Think about how quickly your cloud footprint is growing. Will the scanner that works perfectly today still perform well when you’ve doubled your cloud resources next year? Some scanners start to crawl when faced with thousands of assets, while others take it in stride.
The speed of scanning matters too. If a complete scan takes days rather than hours, you’re left with dangerous security gaps. As one Technical Director put it: “We use daily vulnerability testing to guarantee our security and support our ISO certification requirements. The scanner’s ability to handle our rapidly growing cloud footprint without slowing down has been crucial.”
When comparing options, don’t just take the vendor’s word for it. Ask for performance benchmarks in environments similar to yours, and pay special attention to how the scanner handles multi-cloud environments if you’re running workloads across different providers. A scanner might excel in AWS but struggle with Azure or GCP.
User-Friendliness and Deployment Ease
Even the most powerful security tool becomes worthless if your team avoids using it because it’s too complicated. User experience isn’t just about pretty interfaces—it’s about adoption and effectiveness.
During your evaluation, bring in the people who’ll actually use the scanner day-to-day. Can they find what they need without hunting through endless menus? Is the deployment process straightforward, or will it consume weeks of your IT team’s time?
The learning curve matters tremendously. Some scanners require extensive training before your team can use them effectively, while others are intuitive enough that new users can be productive almost immediately.
“If you work for a company that’s in the cloud, the right security solution provides you with robust security visibility that is second to none,” shared one VP of Information Security who prioritized usability in their selection process.
Don’t underestimate the importance of good documentation and responsive support. When your team hits a roadblock at 2 AM during an incident response, clear documentation and quick support can make all the difference.
Compliance and Regulatory Support
For many organizations, compliance requirements drive the need for vulnerability scanning in the first place. Your scanner should make compliance easier, not more complicated.
Look for scanners with built-in support for the frameworks that matter to your business—whether that’s PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 27001, or NIST. The best solutions let you run a scan once and generate reports for multiple compliance frameworks, saving your team countless hours of manual work.
Beyond basic reporting, consider whether the scanner can automatically collect and preserve the evidence you’ll need during audits. Can it show your compliance posture in real-time, or will you still be scrambling to gather documentation when the auditors arrive?
As one CTO advised, “We highly recommend a reliable and efficient vulnerability scanning solution for anyone seeking to lift their security posture while streamlining operations.” This becomes especially true when compliance requirements change or expand—a flexible scanner can adapt without requiring a complete overhaul of your security processes.
Cost and Resource Considerations
The sticker price of a cloud based vulnerability scanner rarely tells the whole story. Understanding the total cost of ownership requires looking beyond the initial purchase.
Different vendors structure their pricing in various ways. Some charge per asset scanned, others offer tiered subscriptions, and some use consumption-based models. The right model for you depends on your environment and how predictable your growth is. If you’re rapidly spinning up and tearing down cloud resources, a consumption model might leave you with bill shock at month’s end.
Watch out for hidden costs that can blow your budget. Does the vendor charge extra for features you consider essential, like compliance reporting or API access? Are there additional fees for premium support or training? These can quickly add up.
Don’t forget to factor in the internal resources needed to manage the scanner. Even the most automated solution requires some level of oversight and expertise. Will you need to hire additional staff or train existing team members?
A CEO who implemented a cloud vulnerability scanner shared this practical perspective: “We partnered with a solution to solve a critical need for our business: continuous, effective, and automated vulnerability scanning. We trust tools like OpenVAS, Zap and Nmap, but didn’t have the time to automate them.”
At Concertium, we help clients steer these evaluation criteria to find the cloud based vulnerability scanner that truly fits their needs. With nearly 30 years of cybersecurity expertise, we provide unbiased guidance that considers your unique environment, team capabilities, compliance requirements, and budget constraints. Our goal isn’t just to help you select a tool—it’s to ensure that tool delivers real security value for your organization.
Best Practices for Implementing a Cloud-Based Vulnerability Scanner
Successfully implementing a cloud based vulnerability scanner isn’t just about choosing the right tool—it’s about integrating it thoughtfully into your security ecosystem. Let’s explore how to get the most from your investment while ensuring comprehensive protection.
Regular and Frequent Cloud Scanning
Cloud environments change constantly—what’s secure today might be vulnerable tomorrow. This dynamic nature requires a shift in how we think about security monitoring.
Gone are the days when quarterly scans were sufficient. With attackers exploiting new vulnerabilities in as little as 12 days, your scanning cadence needs to match the pace of modern threats.
For critical production systems, aim for continuous monitoring or, at minimum, daily scans. Development and test environments should be scanned at least weekly, while any new deployments deserve immediate attention both before and after they go live.
Think of your scanning strategy as risk-based—the more critical or exposed an asset is, the more frequently it should be scanned. Set up automated scheduling so these scans happen without manual intervention, and configure triggers that initiate additional scans whenever configurations change.
One Operations and Security Manager shared their experience: “Every time I log in, it absolutely amazes me how much work has been done on the interface and new integrations.” This ongoing visibility helps catch issues before they become problems.
Before implementing your regular scanning schedule, run a complete baseline scan of your environment. This gives you a starting point to measure progress and helps identify your most vulnerable areas right from the start.
Integrating into Your Cloud Security Strategy
A vulnerability scanner works best when it’s not operating in isolation. Think of it as one instrument in your security orchestra—powerful alone, but transformative when playing in harmony with other tools.
Your cloud based vulnerability scanner should feed data into your broader security ecosystem. Connect it with your Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system to correlate vulnerability data with other security events. Link it to your Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) platform to automate remediation workflows.
“If you work for a company that’s in the cloud, a robust security solution provides you with visibility that is second to none,” explained one VP of Information Security. This visibility becomes even more valuable when integrated with your configuration management, identity and access controls, and threat intelligence feeds.
Document these integration points clearly and establish ownership for addressing findings. Create standardized processes that define how vulnerability data flows through your organization and who’s responsible for remediation. Regularly review these processes to identify opportunities for optimization.
Consider conducting tabletop exercises that simulate security incidents to validate your integrated approach. These exercises often reveal gaps or inefficiencies that might otherwise go unnoticed until a real crisis occurs.
By weaving your cloud based vulnerability scanner into the fabric of your security strategy, you create a more resilient defense that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
Automation and Alerting Systems
The sheer volume of security findings in cloud environments makes manual processing impractical. Automation isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s essential for effective cloud security.
Start by automating asset findy to ensure new cloud resources are automatically added to your scanning inventory. Configure scan triggers based on schedules, changes, or security events. Set up automatic ticket creation for validated vulnerabilities, and develop automated workflows for common remediation actions.
One security engineer explained their choice: “We chose this solution because it was the easiest and best when it comes to integrating into our existing processes.” The right automation makes security feel like a natural extension of your workflow rather than a burden.
When it comes to alerting, quality trumps quantity. Create tiered alert levels based on vulnerability severity and asset criticality. Ensure alerts are routed to the appropriate teams or individuals based on responsibility. Include enough contextual information in alerts to make them actionable without requiring additional research.
To prevent alert fatigue, consolidate related alerts into meaningful groups. This gives responders a comprehensive view of issues while reducing the noise that can lead to important alerts being overlooked.
A Director of Information Security shared a powerful example of effective monitoring: “With Surface Monitoring, we found subdomains we didn’t know we had. Not only would we likely not have found these subdomains, but we also wouldn’t have known about them until someone did something really nasty on one of them and held us to ransom over it.”
At Concertium, our Cloud Security services incorporate these best practices to protect our clients’ environments. We combine AI-improved observability with automated threat eradication to create a powerful defense against emerging threats.
Implementing a cloud based vulnerability scanner isn’t a one-time project—it’s an ongoing journey of refinement and improvement. By following these best practices, you’ll build a more resilient security posture that evolves alongside your cloud environment.
Frequently Asked Questions about Cloud-Based Vulnerability Scanners
Let’s face it – cloud security can feel like navigating a maze sometimes. As you explore cloud based vulnerability scanners, you probably have questions. Here are straightforward answers to the most common ones we hear from our clients.
How Do Cloud Vulnerability Scanners Help with Compliance?
Compliance requirements keep most security teams up at night, but a good cloud based vulnerability scanner can actually help you sleep better.
These tools transform compliance from a quarterly panic into a continuous, manageable process. They come pre-loaded with policies for major frameworks like PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 27001, and NIST, automatically checking your environment against these standards.
When the auditors come knocking, you’ll have detailed records and reports ready to go. Your scanner will have been documenting everything – compliance status, remediation efforts, and historical security posture – giving you concrete evidence of your due diligence.
“We use daily vulnerability testing to guarantee our security and support our ISO certification requirements,” shared one Technical Director we work with. Their team now spends hours on compliance tasks that used to take weeks.
The real magic happens when your scanner identifies compliance gaps before they become problems. That continuous monitoring means you’re never surprised by an audit finding – you’ve already fixed the issues long before anyone asks about them.
If you’re juggling multiple regulations (and who isn’t these days?), look for a scanner that gives you a unified compliance view. This approach helps you address overlapping requirements efficiently rather than treating each framework as a separate project.
How Often Should We Scan Our Cloud Environments?
“How often should we scan?” might be the question we hear most. The honest answer: it depends on your specific situation, but more frequently than you probably think.
For your crown jewels – those critical production environments – continuous monitoring is the gold standard. At minimum, run daily scans to catch new vulnerabilities quickly. Attackers can exploit new vulnerabilities in as little as 12 days after they’re finded, and with 65+ new vulnerabilities emerging daily, weekly scans just don’t cut it anymore.
Development and testing environments can usually manage with weekly scans, though you might want to scan more often during active development sprints. And always, always run scans before promoting code to production – fixing security issues is infinitely easier before they reach your live environment.
Certain situations call for immediate scans:
- After making significant infrastructure changes
- When major new vulnerabilities are announced
- Following any security incident
- Before and after cloud migrations
A cloud security professional we work with put it perfectly: “Continuous scanning isn’t a luxury anymore – it’s table stakes for any serious cloud security program.”
Modern cloud based vulnerability scanners make frequent scanning practical through automation. They can schedule regular scans and trigger additional ones based on events like new deployments or configuration changes. This automation ensures consistent coverage without overwhelming your team.
Just be mindful of balancing security with operations. Work with your scanner provider to ensure that your scanning activities don’t interfere with critical business operations or create performance issues.
What Are The Limitations of Cloud-Based Vulnerability Scanners?
While we’re big believers in the power of cloud based vulnerability scanners, we also believe in transparency about their limitations. Understanding these constraints helps you build a more comprehensive security strategy.
False positives and negatives are reality with any scanning tool. False positives can send your team chasing shadows, while false negatives (missed vulnerabilities) create dangerous blind spots. This is why human expertise remains essential for interpreting results.
Most scanners also struggle with context awareness – they can’t always distinguish between a legitimate security exception and a genuine vulnerability. For example, a scanner might flag a configuration as risky when your team has actually implemented compensating controls that make it secure.
Authentication challenges create another hurdle. Some cloud resources require complex authentication that scanners may struggle with, limiting visibility into certain services. Similarly, API rate limits imposed by cloud providers can affect scanning speed and coverage in large environments.
Modern architectures create their own challenges. Traditional scanning approaches don’t always fully address the unique security concerns of containers and serverless functions, which can create blind spots in your security posture.
Even “continuous” scanning provides snapshots rather than truly real-time visibility. Short-lived vulnerabilities might appear and disappear between scans, potentially giving attackers a window of opportunity.
One Senior Engineering Manager told us: “There are a lot of extremely noisy tools that generate mountains of findings. We were very happy with the low rate of false positives with our chosen solution.” Finding that balance between comprehensive coverage and actionable results is crucial.
To get the most from your scanner:
- Use multiple security tools for comprehensive coverage
- Implement proper vulnerability management processes
- Regularly validate scanner findings through manual testing
- Continuously tune and optimize scanner configurations
- Train your security team to properly interpret and prioritize results
At Concertium, we understand these limitations and help our clients build security programs that combine automated scanning with expert analysis. This balanced approach ensures you get the efficiency of automation without sacrificing the context and judgment that only experienced security professionals can provide.
Conclusion
The digital landscape is evolving at breakneck speed, and with it, the security challenges organizations face. Choosing the right cloud based vulnerability scanner isn’t just a technical decision—it’s a crucial step that directly shapes your organization’s security resilience in this rapidly changing environment.
Throughout this guide, we’ve seen how traditional security approaches simply can’t keep pace with modern cloud environments. The numbers tell a compelling story: over 65 new vulnerabilities emerge daily, and attackers can exploit them in as little as 12 days. This reality makes continuous, automated scanning not just helpful, but essential for staying ahead of threats.
Cloud misconfigurations continue to be one of the leading causes of data breaches. As one security executive shared with us: “We found the solution which gives us much needed actionable insight into our entire infrastructure’s security risk.” This sentiment echoes what we hear from organizations that have implemented effective cloud scanning solutions—visibility transforms security operations.
When selecting your cloud based vulnerability scanner, cloud environments demand specialized tools designed for their dynamic, distributed nature. Look beyond traditional scanners that were built for static, on-premises environments. Your cloud scanner should offer comprehensive coverage across multiple platforms, detect various vulnerability types, and continuously monitor your entire cloud footprint.
Integration capabilities are another vital consideration. Your scanner should fit seamlessly into your existing security ecosystem, connecting with cloud platforms, DevOps tools, and security workflows. This integration creates a cohesive security approach rather than isolated security efforts.
The agent-based versus agentless decision deserves careful thought. Many organizations find value in a hybrid approach that leverages the strengths of both methods—using agentless scanning for broad coverage and agent-based for deeper visibility into critical systems.
Look beyond just feature lists when evaluating solutions. Scalability matters as your cloud footprint grows. Ease of use affects how quickly your team can adopt and effectively use the tool. Compliance support is essential for meeting regulatory requirements. And of course, cost considerations should align with your budget realities and expected return on investment.
Implementing best practices once you’ve selected your scanner is equally important. Regular scanning schedules, integration with broader security strategies, and thoughtful automation will maximize the value of your investment.
At Concertium, we bring nearly 30 years of cybersecurity expertise to help organizations steer these complex decisions. Our Collective Coverage Suite (3CS) with AI-improved observability and automated threat eradication provides comprehensive protection custom to your specific cloud environment and security needs.
Whether you’re just starting your cloud security journey or looking to improve your existing capabilities, the right cloud based vulnerability scanner forms a cornerstone of your security strategy. By applying the guidance in this article, you’ll be well-positioned to select a solution that provides the visibility, insights, and protection your organization needs in today’s challenging threat landscape.
To find how Concertium can help secure your cloud environment with custom security solutions, explore our Vulnerability Risk Management services or reach out to our team of security experts today.