Recently, Elastic and Google Cloud elaborated on their partnership to deliver a comprehensive security solution. This collaboration merges the Elastic Search AI Platform with Google Cloud’s scalable and secure infrastructure, establishing a security platform designed to safeguard hybrid workloads.
Valerio Arvizzigno, Principal Solutions Architect at Elastic and Yang Li, Staff Cloud Solutions Architect at Google highlighted in a blog post that this partnership offers a way to strengthen digital security, showcasing the potential of collaborative efforts in the field of cybersecurity.
The integrated solution simplifies hybrid security management. By unifying threat intelligence, compliance, endpoint protection, SIEM, response, and data intake, organizations can swiftly react to and prevent threats, ensuring continuous security improvement.
The security journey begins with threat intelligence. Every security analyst’s first place of observation is the extensive information on Elastic’s Security Labs. There are resources tailored to the threats that may be encountered, enabling informed decisions based on a threat’s history, potential, and organization’s own risk appetite.
The security platform then connects the reports with a range of resources, including detailed malware analysis reports covering implants and tools, custom-developed utilities that could be valuable to users. It also includes summaries of encountered techniques, and artifacts like rules and signatures that could be implemented.
Furthermore, the Mandiant threat intelligence platform, utilizing its vast repository of data, employs machine learning to identify threats. It provides real-time intelligence on attackers, methods, and vulnerabilities, enabling proactive defense. Elastic complements this by integrating Mandiant and other threat intelligence feeds, offering a unified interface for easier navigation and deep dives into the data. This allows for quick correlation and identification of threats within an organization’s environment.
Beyond threat intelligence, the platform tackles misconfigurations with tools like Google Cloud’s Security Command Center (SCC) and Elastic’s Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM). SCC, an integrated risk platform, collects data from various Google Cloud services and offers threat detection. With the Elastic integration for SCC, organizations can enhance their ability to prevent breaches and remediate issues.
Source: Elastic and Google Cloud: Enhancing security analytics from data ingestion to incident response
We came across a Reddit discussion exploring Elastic Security’s effectiveness as a SIEM, gathering diverse opinions within the cybersecurity community. One user praised its functionality, especially when combined with Wazuh agents, while another called it “excellent” and suggested professional services for implementation.
Earlier this year, Google also announced Google Threat Intelligence featuring Gemini, an AI-powered conversational search tool for threat intelligence. This new soluion enables users to gain deeper security insights.
The Elastic and Google Cloud ecosystem provides multiple integrations for data transfer from monitored services to security tools. Elastic offers native integrations, one of them being Elastic Agent for versatile data collection. Google Cloud’s Dataflow enables agentless, serverless data transfer. For advanced preprocessing, Logstash allows for code-based data manipulation and enrichment.
Harnessing the power of AI, Elastic and Google Cloud are aiming to transform security analytics through GenAI technologies like Google’s Gemini, automating tasks and offering guided analysis. For instance, Elastic AI Assistant allows for conversational interaction with company-specific context, while Attack Discovery automates alerting, threat hunting, and context analysis using advanced AI.
A free 14-day trial cluster is available for users on Elastic Cloud using their respective Google Cloud account to experience the full potential of the integrated security solutions. Users can also subscribe through Google Cloud Marketplace.
