You cannot protect what you cannot see. This principle sounds obvious, yet most organizations operate cloud security programs built on incomplete infrastructure data. They invest in firewalls, endpoint detection, and threat intelligence -- while 30% or more of their cloud resources sit entirely outside their security perimeter.
The Scope of the Visibility Problem
Enterprise cloud environments grow organically. Teams spin up resources for development, testing, and one-off experiments. Over time, this creates a significant gap between what security teams think exists and what actually runs in production.
Industry data paints a consistent picture:
- 30% of cloud resources are unknown to security teams in the average enterprise
- 45% more attack surface exists than organizations estimate
- 67% of breaches originate from shadow IT or forgotten resources
The relationship is straightforward: resources that are not inventoried are not monitored, and resources that are not monitored are not protected.
Why Traditional Security Tools Miss the Mark
Most security tools are designed to analyze and protect known assets. They operate on the assumption that someone has already identified what needs protecting -- an assumption that breaks down in dynamic cloud environments.
This creates a dangerous feedback loop:
- Security tools generate thousands of alerts for monitored resources
- Teams spend their time triaging those alerts
- Meanwhile, the unmonitored resources with the highest risk receive zero attention
- The organization feels busy and productive, but remains exposed
The problem is not a lack of security tooling. It is a lack of foundational visibility.
How VikingCloud Approaches the Problem
VikingCloud takes a visibility-first approach to cloud security. Before analyzing vulnerabilities or generating alerts, the platform builds a complete inventory of your cloud infrastructure.
Discovery comes first. VikingCloud maps every resource across your cloud environments -- every compute instance, storage bucket, database, network configuration, and IAM permission. This includes the forgotten development servers, the abandoned test environments, and the resources that never made it into your CMDB.
Context makes security actionable. With complete visibility, security analysis becomes significantly more effective. A misconfigured storage bucket connected to a production database is a critical finding. The same misconfiguration in an isolated sandbox is a low-priority cleanup task. Without visibility into relationships and dependencies, every finding looks equally urgent.
Continuous discovery keeps pace with change. Cloud environments are not static. Resources are created, modified, and decommissioned constantly. A point-in-time inventory is outdated within hours. VikingCloud maintains continuous visibility so that new resources are identified and assessed as they appear.
The Compounding Benefits of Visibility
When visibility becomes the foundation of your security program, several things improve simultaneously:
- Attack surface reduction -- Identifying forgotten and unnecessary resources allows you to eliminate exposure before attackers find it
- Focused security efforts -- Complete inventory data lets teams prioritize based on actual risk rather than incomplete assumptions
- Faster incident response -- When an incident occurs, understanding the full topology of connected resources dramatically reduces investigation time
- Accurate compliance reporting -- Auditors need a complete picture, not a partial one assembled from multiple disconnected tools
Building a Visibility-First Security Strategy
Adopting this approach does not require replacing your existing security tools. It requires adding a foundational layer beneath them:
- Conduct a discovery baseline -- Compare your current asset inventory against what automated discovery actually finds. The gap is typically larger than expected.
- Automate continuous discovery -- Manual tracking and periodic audits cannot keep pace with cloud-scale infrastructure changes.
- Map relationships and dependencies -- Individual resources matter less than how they connect. A compromised low-privilege service that has network access to a high-value database is a critical risk.
- Connect visibility to action -- Every newly discovered resource should trigger a security assessment. Visibility without follow-through is expensive data collection.
Start With What You Can See
The most dangerous vulnerabilities in your cloud environment are not the ones generating alerts. They are the ones hiding in resources your security tools do not know about.
VikingCloud gives security teams the complete picture they need to make informed decisions, reduce unnecessary risk, and focus their efforts where they matter most.
Start your free trial and find out what your current tools are missing.