Upwind has broadened its runtime protection and visibility offerings to encompass Windows Server virtual machines, thereby enhancing runtime coverage for Windows workloads across major cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
Windows Coverage
With this expansion, Windows Server VMs are now integrated into Upwind’s existing runtime monitoring and detection workflows. The coverage specifically applies to Windows Server 2016 and later versions operating on Amazon EC2, Google Cloud Compute, and Azure virtual machines. This integration is particularly significant as Windows workloads are extensively utilized in cloud environments for various business applications, identity services, databases, and internal systems. Consequently, security teams require deeper insights into the real-time activities occurring within these systems, moving beyond mere reliance on static configuration snapshots.
Upwind’s Windows Sensor is crafted to provide security teams with visibility into host activities on Windows servers. This includes tracking process executions, monitoring network connections, and logging DNS requests. Additionally, it offers continuous assessments for vulnerabilities and configuration issues, ensuring that security measures are both proactive and reactive.
Detection Focus
The Windows Sensor not only aids in asset discovery but also channels telemetry into real-time detection workflows. This feature is designed to assist teams in identifying behaviors that may signal compromise, misuse, lateral movement, or other security threats. The telemetry encompasses various data points, including process activity, network connections, and DNS activity. Security teams can leverage this information to observe how Windows hosts operate in real time and compare these behaviors against established norms within their cloud environments.
Moreover, the feature supports ongoing scanning for vulnerabilities and configuration issues. Upwind emphasizes that this continuous assessment allows for prioritization of remediation efforts based on active cloud assets and their runtime context, rather than relying solely on static findings.
Single Workflow
The runtime visibility for Windows Server VMs is seamlessly integrated across Upwind’s Runtime Map, Detections, and Sensor components. This integration aims to unify the monitoring, detection, and risk-prioritization workflows for Windows systems with those used for other components of a customer’s cloud estate. Once deployed, Windows VM sensors are visible in the Components view, facilitating monitoring, patching, and tracking from a single interface, thus eliminating the need for disparate tools.
This expansion aligns with a broader trend in cloud security that emphasizes the importance of runtime behavior as organizations distribute workloads across multiple providers. There is an increasing demand for tools that not only identify the assets present in a cloud account but also elucidate how these assets behave once operational.
For Windows systems, this focus is particularly crucial, given that many businesses continue to depend on Windows Server for essential infrastructure and line-of-business applications, even as they transition more workloads to public cloud environments. These systems often encompass identity and authentication services, internal applications, and databases that are vital to daily operations.
While security teams may be aware of the presence of these machines through inventory records or cloud configuration data, such information does not always reflect their current activities. Runtime monitoring seeks to bridge this gap by providing insights into active processes, communications, and other host behaviors while systems are in operation.
By extending its monitoring capabilities to Windows Server VMs, Upwind addresses a critical aspect of cloud infrastructure that can often be overlooked, especially when monitoring is more robust for containerized or Linux-based workloads. This latest release aims to eliminate that blind spot, integrating Windows servers into the same operational view as other cloud assets. Supported environments include Amazon EC2, Google Cloud Compute, and Microsoft Azure VMs running Windows Server 2016 or later.
