At Aembit, we often see clients initiate their journey with us when they face specific challenges in securing workload-to-workload access.
Common starting points include safeguarding CI/CD workflow; managing access to a sensitive datastore like Snowflake; or policy-based access to their vault.
- Operations teams are only alerted about new workloads when they’re nearing production –typically via a Slack message as deployment approaches.
- Developers are required to complete a form when starting a new project. Once logged, the team can allocate production resources.
- “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” Some teams only take notice of workloads if issues arise during operations.
However, it gets even more challenging when you are trying to map the access relationships among these workloads. For example, what databases does this workload access? Does this workload touch sensitive customer records? Financial information? If so, how secure and closely managed is that access?
Aembit’s Approach to Workload Discovery
Based on our research with customers, we designed Workload Discovery around three main principles:
1) Transparency: DevSecOps teams should be able to access workload information seamlessly, without requiring developers to provide workload information out-of-band or add code to their workloads solely for discovery purposes.
2) Dynamic: Our system is designed to continuously and proactively identify new workloads as they are deployed, ensuring that no asset goes unnoticed.
3) Actionable: We prioritize ease of integration. Once a workload is identified, the process of bringing it under the governance of Aembit’s Workload IAM is straightforward, enhancing overall security management without adding complexity.
Aembit’s approach is faithful to this:
- Transparent. With Aembit Edge, there’s no need for teams to alter their applications. Simply integrate Edge via deployment automation tools, and it will begin mapping the access relationships between workloads seamlessly.
- Dynamic. With Edge running, Aembit will see new workloads (or new access relationships) as they come online. That means Aembit will match pace with the changes in your software environment.
- Actionable. Managing new workloads is streamlined with our point-and-click interface. By defining an access policy and simply putting Aembit Edge in active mode, you can switch from passively monitoring traffic to actively securing access.
Getting Started
Many organizations may not yet be prepared to transition from relying on long-lived secrets to adopting Workload IAM. For these organizations, Aembit Workload Discovery can be operated in passive mode to merely observe and gather insights about their environment.
This data serves as a powerful tool for teams to construct a compelling business case for implementing Workload IAM, highlighting the benefits of enhanced security, increased automation, and the reduction of cumbersome manual tasks that hinder business operations.
When the time comes to make the switch, it can be done seamlessly, without the need for additional code deployments or placing extra demands on development teams. The process is straightforward and designed to be as unobtrusive as possible.
Ready to Learn More?
We’d love to work with you as we move workload discovery from preview to GA. Contact us and we can deep dive with you on how it would function in your environment!
