01Introduction
Cloud attacks often never touch an endpoint. An attacker with a stolen key can list buckets, create users and exfiltrate data entirely through provider APIs, which endpoint tools never see.
02What is CDR?
Cloud detection and response (CDR) is the practice and tooling for detecting, investigating and responding to threats in cloud environments using control plane audit logs, identity activity, network flow data and workload telemetry.
03How CDR works
CDR turns API activity into attack narratives.
- 1.
Collect
Ingest CloudTrail, Google Cloud audit logs, Azure activity logs, OCI Audit logs, identity provider events and flow logs.
- 2.
Detect
Match known attacker techniques and anomalies, such as unusual regions, new access keys or mass object reads.
- 3.
Correlate
Stitch events across identities and accounts into a single incident, enriched with threat intelligence.
- 4.
Respond
Disable keys, revoke sessions or isolate resources, often through SOAR playbooks.
04Threats and risks
Cloud detection has its own blind spots.
Logging gaps
Data events disabled for cost reasons, so reads from storage go unrecorded.
Legitimate-looking abuse
An attacker using valid credentials and normal APIs looks like an engineer.
Alert volume
Every console click is an event, and most anomalies are benign.
Speed
Automated attacks can go from leaked key to exfiltration in minutes.
05How Parameter helps
Parameter isn't a runtime detection tool. It shrinks the attack surface CDR has to watch.
Close paths before they're used
Cloud Security finds and fixes the identity and exposure paths that make cloud intrusions possible.
Catch leaked keys early
Sentinel flags credentials in commits before they reach an attacker.
Context for triage
Knowing which resources sit on proven attack paths helps the SOC rank alerts. See AI SOC.
