Lacework alternatives and competitors

With Orca, the main thing that we're leveraging is their Cloud Security Posture Management capability. 

It is a SaaS solution.

It provides the assurance that we have coverage across AWS specifically because we have so many accounts. As a large organization, we have prod environments for customers, and then we have our corporate environments and our playground environments where there are various levels of interactions, data flows, and business use cases. Because we have Orca, we have the competence and assurance that we know where our fleet and where our assets are.

The big thing for us was just making sure that the side channel scanning, which is their proprietary tech, does not really create any burden or load by adding an agent onto the box. It should just do another snapshot. It gives us a better performance overall because there is no implication down to the actual environment or AWS.

It provides agentless data directly from our cloud configuration and from the workload's runtime block storage. The agentless approach means that there is zero performance impact. That's kind of a big part. When you typically add an agent to any system, it's going to use some of the compute or the memory, but this has no performance implications. That part is exciting because when you think of the security realm, often, as a team out of the cost center and a business enabler, there are situations where if we do affect performance, it's not great for the business. So, we have the understanding and the Corporate EQ that we don't want to have any impact on performance. This enables us again with the confidence that we're getting the right information out without having that impact down to our engineers or our production support.

The agentless and direct collection of data enable Orca to see assets within our environmental and business contexts and prioritize truly critical security issues. It provides another notch up on confidence in terms of knowing what's in our production environment and having the ability to rapidly query in case there's a new CVE that's coming up. So if we know there is a drop in data, we have the ability to scan and see the assets and do the patch management as necessary or tear down boxes that don't need to be up there anymore. With the way it works, having visibility across the org is hands down the biggest benefit for us.

The agentless approach also means that we're able to avoid the need to deploy and maintain multiple tools.

With its Cloud Security Posture Management capability, we have the ability to read across all of our cloud-based environments, which includes AWS and Azure. We have visibility into those environments. Seeing all vulnerabilities and configurations is really powerful for us, but ultimately, the ability to use the API to query across the fleet to understand what is the current state, what is the patch level, which ones are potentially exposed for a new CVE that just came out is even more valuable. It allows us to gather really specific intelligence through simple queries.

Given the agentless deployment, its time-to-value is less than 24 hours. It took less than 24 hours, and we had intelligence and insight. Ultimately, it is getting access to the API, and then from there, it is about getting the side channel scanning going on. Once that is complete, the real-time proprietary nature of new assets pops up. We also have the visibility if an old asset has been sitting out there unused for a really long time.

They can expand a little bit in anti-malware detection. While we have pretty good confidence that it's going to detect some of the static malware, some of the detections are heuristics. There could be a growth in the library from where they're pulling their information, but we don't get a lot of those alerts based on the design of our products. In general, that might be an area that needs to be filled since they offer it as a service within it.

We've been using the Orca solution for about a year and a half. 

It had maybe two periods of downtime if my memory serves me correctly, but it was hard to even know that the service was down because we weren't actively querying during those windows. These downtimes were probably for less than a few hours. I read about them through an email from the founder. We wouldn't have even noticed them if they didn't update us on it.

We started with our production account, and then we kept scaling to our test environments, to our corporate environments, ultimately to every AWS account that we have out there. It is being used as extensively as we can in our environment. We have about 14 AWS accounts. If we need more environments, it will be included as part of the practice.

Luckily, we have a shared Slack channel. So, we have an extended Slack channel, and we're in there with the founders, as well as key engineers and members. So, it's real-time for us. If we have an issue, we go in and just message out, and then we can have that full loop within that Slack channel. We were customer number nine, and having this Slack channel was just something that made sense at the time.

I would rate them a 10 out of 10. We get everything addressed pretty quickly.

In terms of vulnerability assessment coverage, a lot of it was native tooling. We were using AWS GuardDuty across the environment as step one for anomaly detection, but for vulnerability management, there was very limited capacity.  We could leverage some of the existing tools that were out there to scan and perform analysis, but in reality, we're using a lot of what AWS offers. So, for the most part, it was native AWS tooling with GuardDuty and then just doing our best to query the fleet through AWS itself. Orca has really filled the gap for us.

Because of its agentless nature, there is zero deployment time. It is mostly just getting the connection and performing the analysis. The deployment strategy is mostly, "Choose the accounts that are there and then hookup Orca." It took less than 24 hours, and we had intelligence and insight. 

It is the cost of the visibility that you get. When you really sit down and think about what do you need to do to secure an environment with a low impact on the business, and you take a look out into the world, I think this tool is well justified around cost.

We were looking at a few other tools out there. Dome9 and Lacework were the big key ones that were out there. There were some of the old heavy hitters, but they really didn't add a ton of value to what we were looking for. Some of them were just AWS GuardDuty on steroids. 

For us, Orca just offered a better comprehensive solution. We had done enough demos and discussions, and we felt like, "Hey, it's worth the gamble on someone that's trying to solve something and maybe we can help drive the backlog or some of the features as well by being an early customer". That's a part of our strategy when it comes to choosing security solutions. It definitely fits our business needs.

When choosing to go with Orca, the fact that it is a SaaS solution that is updated daily, and that new features are available at no additional cost was useful for us. That's the way it should be. There shouldn't be paywalls and all these other things. You're paying for the proprietary technology of the company and how they kind of package that up. They've been very open in terms of what features are available when and how they work.

When we first looked at Orca, we weren't skeptical about whether it could do all the things that they said it can do. That's because the way it was presented was very logical in terms of how they instrumented the technological approach, and then the background of the founders made a lot of sense. So, either it was going to work, or it wasn't going to work, and if it didn't work, then we'd have an issue. When we did a PoC, it worked very well for us in a short window of time, and we had the confidence that this was going to be the right tool for us.

I would advise others to not just set it and forget it. This is an ongoing capability. Just like every vulnerability management process, it is an ongoing continuous cycle. So, I wouldn't leverage this for one-time use or quarterly use. This is real-time that you should be analyzing, and on top of that, as new vulnerabilities are set, use the search function.

Everything is included in Orca’s package, but Orca hasn't helped us to consolidate vendors or services. That's because we weren't replacing any existing ones. We didn't have six other things doing what they were doing. We were venturing out into a solution that has not ever been in place and figuring out exactly how to integrate it, how to leverage, and ultimately how to level up the organization.

I would rate this solution a 10 out of 10.

We use this solution to detect misconfigurations in the cloud. It's a multi-cloud solution, so if you're running a multi-cloud environment like Azure, AWS, and GCP, you only need to deploy a single solution. It assists with improving the security posture of an organization.

I use CSPM and CWPP. The previous organization I worked for used both, but the company I work for now only uses CSPM. I've also worked with code security.

We recently acquired this solution, so it has slowly started gaining momentum in my organization.

This solution provides us with a single tool to protect all of our cloud resources and applications without having to manage and reconcile different security and compliance reports. It's a single solution for everything in a multi-cloud environment.

It enhances operations, but it's a pretty measurable tool. It provides comprehensive visibility.

It provides risk clarity at runtime across the entire pipeline and shows issues as they are discovered during the build phases. 

The modules in CSPM and CWPP are visibility, compliance governance, threat detection, data security, host security, container security, serverless security, web application, and API security. This is an additional cost, so I don't think any organization uses all of the modules.

I previously worked for a health organization that was using this solution. They were able to get certified in HITRUST using this product.

Our developers are able to correct issues using the tools they use to code.

The CSPM and CWPP functionalities are pretty good. It depends on what kind of data you have in your cloud, your workload, and some other factors. If you're doing a lot of containers, you need CWPP models. If you just do regular cloud contributions, then you can use CSPM.

It provides security spanning multi and hybrid-cloud environments. My current organization's goal is to migrate to the cloud eventually. If that's your organization's goal, you need to have some kind of security mechanism or protection in place to make sure that the resources you're building in the cloud are built for the best security practices and are free of misconfiguration vulnerabilities. 

When we deploy containers in any cloud, the runtime protection is really good. If a container is running any kind of application, it can detect a cryptomining attack. The solution also provides File Integrity Monitoring testing.

It has various models and provides comprehensive visibility. It shows us how our assets are performing in any of our clouds. It gives us a holistic view of our native cloud environment, and we can also fine-tune the policies for our architecture.

The modules help us take a preventative approach to cloud security. Flow Logs provide a real-time assessment of our network.

It recently integrated with another company called Checkov. It checks all the misconfigurations that a developer could make during the build phase. This means that whenever we're building any kind of application or deploying any application, it will detect it right away. We can integrate it into our CI/CD pipeline or with any other Jenkins plugins. I tested those use cases as well. The solution has improved since they integrated the product with Checkov.

It provides good visibility. In terms of controls, it depends on how you want to do it. Sometimes, you need to be specific in terms of controls. With runtime detection, it's going to be more powerful. We're confident that our assets are secure.

The solution is capable of integrating security into our CI/CD pipeline and adding touch points into existing DevOps processes. We don't have the option to leverage it, but I have tested it in my previous organization.

This solution is more AWS and Azure-centric. It needs to be more specific on the GCP side, which they are working on.

I have been using this solution for about two and a half years.

The solution is reliable.

The solution is scalable.

Technical support is very helpful. I would rate them a nine out of ten. We have a weekly cadence.

Positive

The setup was very easy and straightforward. We haven't set up the automation perspective. We're still testing it, so we haven't leveraged it yet.

The setup didn't take very long, but it will be different for every organization. If your cloud architect team is willing to deploy with you, it shouldn't take more than a week. It also depends on how large the organization is and how many subscriptions are in the cloud environment.

We don't need to maintain anything on the console side.

We used an integrator from Palo Alto. They were very good and offered great support.

The solution is pretty expensive. It all depends on the organization's goals and needs.

The cost depends on the pricing model. Compared to other solutions, the cost isn't that bad.

I compared the solution to other security products like Fortinet, Lacework, and Security Command Center.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. 

Those who want to use this solution, need to understand the concept behind this product and get to know their own environment first. The solution will give you holistic visibility of your assets, which will show you what needs to be fixed. Security comes with an expense, so it depends on what you want to leverage and where.

I'm still testing the automation capabilities because my organization is specific to one cloud. They were more aggressive on Azure and AWS Prisma Cloud, but now they are considering GCP customers as well.

We're still in POC mode for continuous security that comes under runtime protection. I can't 100% guarantee that it reduces runtime alerts.