Quick refresher: What are cloud SOC tools?
Cloud security operations center (SOC) tools are the security solutions used by SOC teams to track and triage threats and vulnerabilities in cloud environments.
Cloud adoption is no longer news, but cyberattacks exploiting cloud-specific risks? Now that manages to hit the news at least every other day. No shocker there—the cloud is so complex and fast-paced that misconfigurations, design flaws, and exposures are inevitable.
To stay ahead of these threats, organizations need SOCs, and SOC teams need tools. SOCs act as the nerve center of organizations’ security strategy, keeping an eye on cloud environments to find and neutralize potential threats before they cause harm. SOCs equally track and fix compliance failures in areas like IAM and data security, so enterprises don’t get slammed with painful compliance fines.
But SOCs don’t come cheap. Open-source tools offer a way around this; they’re cost-effective, transparent, and highly customizable. And while their features aren’t as extensive as their commercial counterparts, their flexibility allows them to be easily paired with proprietary cloud-native security solutions where necessary—without breaking the bank.
Before we check out some top OSS SOC tools, let’s briefly explore the challenges these tools solve.
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Understanding SOC requirements in cloud environments
The unique challenges of cloud SOCs
Scalability: Cloud environments scale up and down at short notice, requiring SOC tools to adapt in real time. But the scalability challenge is more than just having multiple resources to monitor—without the right tools, it also means more blind spots for attackers to exploit.
Ephemeral resources: Designed for static workloads, traditional SOC setups can’t help security teams answer questions like which ephemeral workloads (e.g., containers and serverless functions) are currently running and whether they’re properly configured.
Decentralized data: Logs and events in the cloud are scattered across multiple services and regions, making it harder to correlate and analyze threats. For example, SOC teams can find it difficult to trace the relationship between a suspicious activity in a container that has since been shut down and a more recent lateral movement towards sensitive data.
Cloud-native attack vectors: Cloud-specific risks—think insecure APIs, misconfigured VMs and containers, and lateral movement within cloud workloads—require specialized tools for detection.
Critical SOC tool capabilities
What essential functions should OSS cloud SOC tools have to solve the problems described above?:
Continuous monitoring: SOCs tools should monitor cloud workloads non-stop, seamlessly adjusting to the cloud’s ephemeral and highly scalable nature. These tools should detect and correlate anomalies, monitor traffic flow, instantly alert teams to risky configurations, and improve overall security posture.
Log collection and analysis: An essential part of your SOC arsenal, cloud-native log collection and analysis tools can bring game-changing insights into anomaly detection and root cause analysis. They drill down into decentralized logs, helping security teams connect the dots across various cloud services and discover potential security incidents.
Threat detection: SOC threat detection tools should have up-to-date vulnerability databases and be connected to real-time threat intel feeds. With these in place, identifying indicators of compromise (IoCs) and emerging attack techniques can be a walk in the park.
Incident response: Cloud-focused incident response tools should come with prebuilt and custom incident response strategies. These tools function as first responders, swiftly halting suspicious activities, blocking malicious IPs, and isolating vulnerable resources.
Key open-source tools for cloud SOCs
To build well-rounded SOC toolkits, security teams need a range of tools, including monitoring, threat detection and response, vulnerability management, and incident response (IR) tools. Next, let’s explore open-source tools from each category.
(P.S.: Some tools, like Wazuh, straddle multiple categories.)
Monitoring and log collection tools
Monitoring and log collection tools are mostly security information and event management (SIEM) tools—they collect and aggregate monitoring data from heterogeneous sources to detect potential security incidents. Our top three picks in this section are KubeArmor, Security Onion, and Graylog Open:
KubeArmor
KubeArmor is a Kubernetes runtime monitoring engine, a Kubernetes event logging tool, and a security policy enforcement solution rolled into one.
Features
eBPF and Linux Security Modules (LSM)–based architecture for real-time pod behavior monitoring, network event logging, and IoC detection
Custom and built-in security Kubernetes policies for application hardening and zero-trust policy enforcement
Predictive vulnerability discovery and remediation
Security Onion
Security Onion is an agent-based SIEM and intrusion detection tool. It can be run as a standalone solution for enterprise SOC needs or as a search and analytics tool coupled with more advanced solutions.
Features
Has a rich network of APIs and agents for signature-based threat detection, packet capture and analysis, and live data querying
Uses intrusion detection honeypots for real-time threat hunting
Multitenant structure allows for seamless collaboration between SOCs and IT teams
Graylog Open
Particularly suited to cloud environments due to its near-limitless scalability, Graylog Open is the free, limited-feature, self-managed version of Graylog’s SIEM solution.
Features
Fast log ingestion to help security teams run through massive volumes of logs in record time
Intuitive interface for aggregating and correlating log streams from containers, servers, serverless instances, firewalls, and more
Lucene-based queries and custom parsers for easy, customized incident querying and root cause analysis
Threat detection and threat intelligence solutions
Threat detection tools uncover and respond to threats; threat intelligence tools provide SOC analysts with attacker TTPs and common IoCs to facilitate threat hunting. Some top OSS tools in this category are Wazuh and Yeti:
Wazuh
Wazuh is a unified extended detection and response (XDR), SIEM, and vulnerability detection solution. It runs on Ubuntu, Red Hat, and a few other Linux versions. Wazuh comes with a dashboard, an indexer, and a number of agents to pull logs from various sources.
Features
Comprehensive log collection and transformation across cloud assets, endpoints, APIs, and networks for actionable insights into anomalies
Unified agent for endpoint and cloud workload monitoring to ensure full-stack protection
Multi-cloud threat detection with active response scripts for swift threat detection and response
Central management console for attack surface management and compliance checks
Vulnerability detection and risk prioritization using the MITRE ATT&CK framework
Yeti
Yeti collects TTPs, IoCs, and other threat-related data and consolidates them into actionable intelligence.
Features
Allows threat data storage and querying via a REST API
Enriches threat data with IP geolocation, domain resolution, and other key details SOCs need to hunt threats in their stack
Links IoCs to vulnerabilities and risk level using MITRE ATT&CK
Exports intelligence in both machine and human-readable formats for ingestion into CDRs and SIEMs
Vulnerability scanning and asset management
This category of tools track and scan cloud assets to detect vulnerabilities and malware. They include Aircrack-ng and Codename SCNR:
Aircrack-ng
Aircrack-ng is a set of command-line vulnerability scanners for monitoring, attacking, and cracking 802.11 wireless networks.
Features
Passive network monitoring and vulnerability discovery via airmon-ng
Airodump-ng for capturing packets for analysis and injection
Pen testing through aircrack-ng and airdecap-ng to crack WEP/WPA/WPA2 keys and test for network security weaknesses
Codename SCNR
Codename SCNR is a web application vulnerability scanner and a DAST. Designed as a replacement for the now-obsolete Arachni, Codename SCNR works via a CLI, REST API, or web UI.
Features
Vulnerability lifecycle management—from automated scans to discovery, analysis, exploitation, and remediation guidance
Web API vulnerability testing, database querying, and application behavior analysis
Support for SQL injection and code injection for discovery of input validation, file inclusion, and other code vulnerabilities
Incident response and forensics tools
Incident response and forensics tools provide data on security incidents to enable SOC teams to dig into compromised systems and find attack paths and root causes.
Velociraptor
Velociraptor is a digital forensic and incident response tool for endpoints. It’s equipped with high-velocity VQL artifacts that provide swift visibility into multiple endpoints at a go and enable post-incident processing without requiring teams to first export data.
Features
One-click incident containment that allows incident response teams to halt the spread of attacks before full forensics is done
Threat hunting across endpoints and network devices to uncover hidden threats
File system analysis for malware investigation
osquery
osquery is a low-level forensics solution for Windows, MAC, and Linux devices. It allows security teams to expose endpoints in relational database format and query them using SQL commands. It also lets teams schedule vulnerability scans and compliance checks to run at regular intervals.
Features
Simplifies forensics by using relational tables for quick insights into malicious files, fileless attacks, and more
Gathers incident response data from plugins, file hashes, storage volumes, user login records, and a host of other sources to allow analysts to correlate and analyze event data
Includes pre-built query packs for vulnerability scanning, incident response, and compliance assessment
GRR Rapid Response
GRR Rapid Response (GRR) is a live forensics and incident response framework for analyzing compromised systems. It has a client-server architecture designed for fast, remote forensic analysis.
Features
Offers a Python agent (the client), which provides deep visibility into all related security events once it’s installed on target devices
Enables teams to “hunt” systems at scale to find IoCs and vulnerable components
Automates incident response for recurring events
Quick summary
Open-source SOC tools offer a cost-effective and flexible way to address many of the challenges faced by modern security teams. From monitoring and log collection to threat detection and incident response, tools like Wazuh, Security Onion, and Velociraptor provide robust capabilities that can be tailored to fit diverse cloud environments. However, while these tools are powerful, they often fall short in addressing the unique complexities of cloud-native security.
For example, many open-source solutions lack the specialized features needed to detect cloud-specific risks like misconfigured APIs, lateral movement in containerized workloads, or vulnerabilities in serverless functions. Additionally, they may not offer the advanced AI/ML capabilities required to minimize false positives, contextualize threats across distributed environments, or automate complex incident response workflows.
So, what’s the solution? A hybrid approach. By combining the flexibility of open-source tools with the advanced capabilities of a commercial cloud detection and response (CDR) solution, organizations can build a comprehensive security strategy that bridges the gaps left by open-source tools.
Introducing Wiz Defend
This is where Wiz Defend comes in. As a cutting-edge cloud detection and response solution, Wiz Defend is designed to complement your open-source SOC tools and elevate your security operations to the next level. Here’s how Wiz Defend fills the gaps and enhances your SOC workflows:
Agentless Monitoring: Wiz Defend provides complete visibility into your cloud environment—from code to cloud and back—without the need to deploy agents on every resource. This means you can monitor risks, threats, and vulnerabilities in real time, no matter how dynamic or complex your infrastructure.
AI-Powered Risk Remediation: Leveraging Amazon Bedrock, Wiz Defend delivers AI-driven remediation guidance that walks your team through the entire remediation process. This not only reduces mean time to repair (MTTR) but also ensures that even the most complex issues are resolved quickly and effectively.
The Wiz Security Graph: Wiz Defend automatically correlates risks into a unified, contextualized graph. This allows your SOC team to visualize not just the threats but also the attack paths leading to them, making forensics and incident response faster and more accurate.
Real-Time Risk Prioritization: Wiz Defend goes beyond basic risk scoring. It considers resource criticality, risk severity, and the potential impact on your unique business environment to prioritize risks intelligently. When Wiz flags something as critical, you can trust that it truly is.
Compliance and Policy Enforcement: With Wiz Defend’s compliance heatmap, you can ensure adherence to regulatory requirements like GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2. Automated policy checks further strengthen your security posture by identifying and addressing compliance gaps in real time.
Open-source tools are a great starting point, but for organizations operating in complex, multi-cloud environments, a hybrid approach is the key to staying ahead of evolving threats. By integrating Wiz Defend with your open-source toolkit, you can unlock the full potential of your SOC and ensure comprehensive protection for your cloud infrastructure.
Ready to see Wiz Defend in action? Request a demo and discover how it can transform your security operations.
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