Unlock More Customer Value With Cloud Native Security Fabric

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Two-thirds of organizations struggle to integrate cloud firewalls into their broader security stack, leaving exploitable gaps as workloads communicate across environments, according to a recent Aviatrix survey of IT professionals. To stay ahead, cybersecurity teams must move at the speed of the cloud.

CRNtv host Sydney Neely sat down with Doug Merritt, CEO of Aviatrix and a longtime innovator in cloud infrastructure and security, to discuss how the company’s Cloud Native Security Fabric helps close these gaps.

Sydney: What has changed in security for the cloud reality we are in today?

Doug: Since the mainframe era, organizations have taken a fairly simple approach to protecting important assets such as servers, storage arrays, applications and databases. They placed those assets in well-guarded areas with access controls like badging and background checks to make sure they were safe.

When those data centers connected to the internet, the focus shifted to protecting the data center from outside threats. The internet was not built to be a safe network. It was built to be effective and pervasive. That approach worked for decades.

With the move to the cloud, everything changes. Each one of those assets—applications, databases, servers—now is essentially its own perimeter being moved to the cloud. The internet is the main way they connect and communicate. It is a radically different landscape that requires a different philosophy if you want to be effective in securing it.

Sydney: Aviatrix recently introduced Cloud Native Security Fabric to close these gaps. What is it exactly?

Doug: It is intentionally built to address this problem. We use the term Security Fabric to emphasize that if you want to secure those assets, you need something pervasive.

It has to observe all communications between thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of workloads. It is deployed natively inside these clouds for each organization. Just as importantly, it is able to enforce actions.

If you see a database communicating in ways it should not, it is not enough to just see it. You need to be able to stop it. The Security Fabric protects egress traffic, which is internet connections and east-west traffic, which is communication between workloads. It ensures you have the policies and controls in place to keep your environment safe.

Sydney: What is the partner opportunity?

Doug: It is extraordinary because we are filling a space that is not filled right now. To do that effectively, we partner with many of the tools organizations already use.

Most companies are investing in scanning tools such as Wiz to get visibility across all their clouds. We have a strong integration with Wiz and actually just won an award for it. We provide the enforcement layer around that scan.

Many organizations also use endpoint security, and we integrate with CrowdStrike and other endpoint detection tools. Companies are also focused on identity and access, where players like Zscaler and Netskope come in. We integrate there too. Those are complementary. Our difference is that we sit in the fabric of the cloud itself, monitoring communication and providing controls between workloads.

Sydney: How is AI intensifying the problem?

Doug: AI and serverless workloads are radically intensifying the problem. AI does it in two ways. First, the volume and intensity of cyberattacks are increasing because malicious actors now use generative AI for more aggressive, consistent and persistent attacks. AI never sleeps.

Second, the way organizations deploy AI makes the problem worse. Most AI functions are ephemeral and serverless. You are spinning up a whole new set of workloads and technologies inside the cloud, and the communications between them and the data they carry are incredibly important.

We are usually using AI to help with critical tasks. So it takes a really bad problem—an uncovered attack surface—and multiplies it. Suddenly that environment is 10 times larger, which makes the demand for Cloud Native Security Fabric even more urgent.

To learn more about how Aviatrix helps partners elevate cloud network security, visit aviatrix.com/partners/vars.