Cybersecurity solutions

Agent-based vs. agentless cybersecurity solutions: risks and advantages

Organizations face the critical decision of choosing between agent-based and agentless security solutions—or, more commonly, adopting a hybrid approach that leverages the strengths of both. Each method has its distinct advantages and inherent risks, making it essential for cybersecurity professionals to understand the nuances of both approaches to build a robust and effective security posture.

What are agent-based solutions?

Agent-based solutions rely on software agents installed directly on endpoints—such as laptops, desktops, servers, and mobile devices—to monitor, detect, and respond to security threats. These agents offer deep visibility into endpoint activities, enabling granular control and real-time threat response.

Risks of agent-based solutions

1. Performance Impact:
   • System Resources: Agents can consume significant resources such as CPU, memory, and storage, potentially degrading the performance of the endpoint. This is particularly problematic for older or less powerful devices, where the agent’s resource demands can slow down operations and impact user productivity.
   • User Disruption: The resource consumption by agents can lead to user dissatisfaction, especially if it affects daily workflows or application performance.
2. Complex Deployment and Management:
   • Installation Overhead: Deploying agents across a large and diverse environment can be a complex task. Different operating systems, hardware specifications, and configurations can complicate the installation process.
   • Ongoing Maintenance: Agents require regular updates, patches, and monitoring to stay effective against evolving threats, adding to the workload of IT and security teams. Failing to update agents promptly can leave endpoints vulnerable to new exploits.
3. Compatibility Issues:
   • Device Diversity: Not all devices in an enterprise environment can support agent installation. IoT devices, legacy systems, or specialized hardware may lack the capability to run agents, leading to potential security gaps.
   • Software Conflicts: Agents may conflict with other software installed on the endpoint, causing instability or degraded performance. These conflicts can be challenging to diagnose and resolve.
4. Security Vulnerabilities:
   • Agent Exploitation: Agents themselves can become targets for attackers. If an agent has a vulnerability, it could be exploited to gain unauthorized access or control over the endpoint.
   • Update Risks: While updates are necessary for security, flawed updates can introduce new issues or vulnerabilities, potentially leading to a compromised endpoint.
5. Scalability Challenges:
   • Large Environments: Managing and scaling agent-based solutions across thousands of endpoints is a significant challenge, especially in geographically dispersed or highly dynamic environments.
   • Resource Management: Ensuring all endpoints remain compliant with security policies and are regularly updated can be difficult, particularly in large organizations.
6. Network Dependency:
   • Offline Scenarios: While agents can operate offline, their effectiveness might be limited without regular updates or the ability to communicate with central management systems. This limitation can reduce the agent’s ability to respond to new threats when disconnected from the network.

What are agentless solutions?

Agentless solutions, as the name implies, do not require the installation of software agents on individual endpoints. Instead, they rely on existing network infrastructure, API integrations, or external tools to monitor, detect, and respond to threats. This approach is particularly advantageous in environments where deploying agents is impractical or impossible.

Advantages of agentless solutions

1. Ease of Deployment:
   • No Installation Required: Agentless solutions do not need software installation on individual devices, which simplifies deployment and reduces initial setup time. This is especially beneficial in large-scale environments where deploying agents across numerous endpoints can be cumbersome.
   • Minimal Configuration: These solutions often work with existing network infrastructure and require minimal configuration changes, making them easier to implement, even in complex environments.
2. Reduced Performance Impact:
   • No Local Resource Usage: Since agentless solutions do not run processes on the endpoints, they do not consume local system resources. This avoids any negative impact on endpoint performance, maintaining user productivity.
   • User Transparency: Users typically remain unaware of agentless solutions, as they operate without interfering with the endpoint’s performance or functionality.
3. Broad Device Coverage:
   • Diverse Environments: Agentless solutions can monitor and protect a wide range of devices, including those that cannot support agents, such as IoT devices, legacy systems, and unmanaged endpoints. This flexibility allows organizations to secure diverse IT environments without gaps in coverage.
   • Scalability: These solutions are generally easier to scale, as they do not require the overhead associated with deploying and managing agents on each device.
4. Lower Maintenance Overhead:
   • No Updates Required: Without agents, there is no need for regular software updates or patches, reducing the ongoing maintenance burden on IT and security teams. This can lead to cost savings and a reduced risk of introducing new issues with updates.
   • Simplified Management: Centralized management of agentless solutions is often simpler, as it doesn’t involve coordinating updates or configurations across a diverse range of endpoints.
5. Compatibility:
   • Cross-Platform Support: Agentless solutions are typically platform-agnostic, working across various operating systems and devices without needing specific software for each platform.
   • Fewer Conflicts: The absence of an agent reduces the likelihood of software conflicts or compatibility issues with other applications running on the endpoint.
6. Security Considerations:
   • Less Attack Surface: With no agent software running on the endpoint, the attack surface is reduced, lowering the risk of introducing new vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers.
   • Network-Centric Security: Agentless solutions often focus on monitoring network traffic, providing visibility into threats without needing direct access to the endpoint itself. This approach can effectively detect and respond to threats at the network level.
7. Real-time and Remote Monitoring:
   • Always-on Monitoring: Agentless solutions can continuously monitor network traffic, cloud environments, or other infrastructure components in real time, without depending on endpoint connectivity.
   • Remote Environments: These solutions are particularly effective in remote or distributed environments where deploying agents might be impractical. They offer a flexible way to maintain security across a geographically dispersed organization.

Balancing agent-based and agentless solutions

While agent-based solutions offer deep visibility, granular control, and real-time response capabilities, they come with risks related to performance, deployment complexity, and potential vulnerabilities. On the other hand, agentless solutions provide ease of deployment, reduced performance impact, broad coverage, and lower maintenance overhead, making them particularly useful in diverse, dynamic, or resource-constrained environments.

In practice, most organizations benefit from a hybrid approach that leverages the strengths of both agent-based and agentless solutions. This combination ensures comprehensive security coverage, with agent-based solutions providing detailed endpoint protection and agentless solutions offering broad, non-intrusive monitoring and control. By carefully selecting and integrating these approaches, organizations can create a resilient cybersecurity posture that addresses the diverse and evolving threat landscape.

The choice between agent-based and agentless cybersecurity solutions depends on the specific needs and constraints of the organization. Understanding the risks and advantages of each approach allows cybersecurity professionals to make informed decisions, ultimately enhancing the security and performance of their IT environment.

Examples of cybersecurity solutions

‍

EDR, NDR, ITDR, MDR, XDR, CDR... which solution should your business choose?

‍

Why integrating your existing cybersecurity solutions with Vectra AI?

Combining existing tools with the Vectra AI Platform can bring several benefits to your company's cybersecurity strategy:

1. Enhanced Visibility: Vectra AI provides advanced network detection and response capabilities that complement existing security tools. By integrating Vectra AI's solution, you gain additional visibility into network traffic, user behavior, and potential threats that may go undetected by other tools. This comprehensive visibility helps identify hidden threats and improves your overall security posture.
2. Threat Detection and Response: Vectra AI's AI-powered threat detection platform employs machine learning algorithms to analyze network behaviors and identify suspicious activities indicative of cyber threats. By integrating Vectra AI with your existing tools, you can augment your threat detection capabilities and receive more accurate and timely alerts, allowing your security team to respond quickly and effectively.
3. Correlation and Contextualization: Vectra AI enriches security events by correlating data from multiple sources and providing context around potential threats. Integrating Vectra AI with your existing tools allows for better correlation and contextualization of security events across your infrastructure, enabling your security team to gain a holistic view of threats and respond with greater accuracy.
4. Reduced Alert Fatigue: Integrating Vectra AI with your existing tools helps reduce alert fatigue by providing more accurate and prioritized alerts. Vectra AI's platform filters out noise and false positives, allowing your security team to focus on the most critical threats and minimize response time.
5. Automation and Orchestration: Vectra AI's integration capabilities enable automation and orchestration of security processes. By integrating with existing tools, you can streamline incident response workflows, automate remediation actions, and improve overall operational efficiency.
6. Comprehensive Threat Intelligence: Vectra AI leverages a global threat intelligence network, continuously updating its knowledge base with the latest threat indicators and attack techniques. By combining existing tools with Vectra AI, your organization benefits from a broader and more comprehensive threat intelligence perspective, enabling proactive defense against emerging threats.
7. Scalability and Flexibility: Vectra AI's platform is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing security infrastructure, regardless of its size or complexity. Whether you have a few security tools or a diverse security stack, Vectra AI can adapt and integrate, providing scalable and flexible solutions that align with your specific needs.

Vectra AI's advanced capabilities, contextualization of threats, and integration with existing tools provide a comprehensive and proactive defense against evolving cyber threats. Check out our technology integrations or see for yourself by requesting a demo.