Securing modern cloud workloads has become a struggle. Teams need deep, real-time visibility to stop threats like privilege escalation and container escape, yet some security tools create more problems than they solve. In fast-moving, ephemeral cloud environments, real-time visibility and protection is a must to stop threats from slipping through the cracks. Organizations often face a tradeoff, though — prioritize security at the cost of performance or preserve performance and risk a breach.
But what if you didn't have to choose?
Imagine gaining unmatched visibility into every process, system call, and network packet inside your containers and hosts — and without modifying the kernel, creating instability, or dragging down performance. That’s the power of eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter). By transforming the Linux kernel into a secure, low-overhead observation deck, eBPF gives security tools the precision to see everything in real time.
The Opportunity for a Modern Approach
eBPF gives security teams a way to achieve stability, agility, and performance at once, transforming long-standing challenges into strengths.
- Reliability: Security once carried the risk of destabilizing systems, with kernel panics a constant concern.
- Agility: Frequent operating system updates demanded continuous maintenance, as agents had to be recompiled and validated for every new kernel version.
- Efficiency: Traditional agents introduced costly context switching, which consumed resources and slowed the very applications they were meant to protect.
The Advantages of eBPF
eBPF changes the equation. It offers a modern, safer path to deep visibility and protection while removing those risks. At its core, eBPF runs small, sandboxed programs directly inside the Linux kernel without altering the kernel itself. Think of it as a secure, high-speed observer embedded within the operating system. These programs capture low-level system events — file access, process execution, network activity — giving security tools real-time visibility into everything that matters.
Because eBPF programs are verified for safety and confined to a controlled sandbox, they can’t crash the kernel. They also eliminate the performance penalties of legacy agents. For fast-moving cloud environments where both speed and stability are non-negotiable, eBPF delivers protection without compromise.
To fit different workloads, the Cortex XDR® agent for cloud supports flexible deployment. It can run in user-space mode for broad compatibility or in kernel-space mode, powered by eBPF, for the strongest protection. Automatic switching between the two modes makes adoption seamless, ensuring security without operational friction.
From Observability to Real-Time Protection
The granular visibility of eBPF lays the foundation for a new generation of cloud security. It enables Cortex CloudTM to deliver high-value capabilities without the performance tradeoffs that plagued older approaches.
Runtime Threat Detection
eBPF traces every process, file access, and network connection in real time. Security tools can catch privilege escalation or lateral movement as they occur, not after the damage is done. This is especially critical in ephemeral container workloads where an attack can unfold and vanish in seconds.
Behavioral Anomaly Detection
By monitoring syscalls and other low-level events, eBPF establishes a baseline of normal workload behavior. Any deviation, such as an unexpected child process or an unusual network connection, can be flagged as a potential threat without relying on static signatures.
Accelerated Incident Response
eBPF captures high-fidelity telemetry directly from the kernel, giving security teams rich data for investigations. That detail makes it possible to reconstruct events with precision, significantly reducing mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR).
The Prevention-First Approach to Stopping Cloud Attacks
Many solutions stop at passive observability. Cortex XDR’s agent for cloud goes further by combining kernel-level telemetry from eBPF with broader contextual signals. The result is a prevention-first approach that moves from simply seeing attacks to actively stopping them.
Exploit Prevention
Cortex Cloud blocks suspicious behavior in memory, processes, and system calls in real time, preventing unpatched vulnerabilities from turning into breaches — even when exploits are unknown.
Behavioral Threat Protection
Machine learning and behavioral analytics extend beyond rules-based detection, identifying advanced attacks like malicious process chains, credential theft, and privilege escalation by spotting the abnormal behaviors that drive them.
Malware Protection
With ML-powered local analysis and dynamic sandboxing from WildFire, the world’s largest malware engine, Cortex Cloud stops both known and unknown malware before it can take hold.
Cortex Cloud Takes Real-Time Cloud Security to the Next Level
The eBPF architecture has transformed what’s possible in Linux security. It delivers the visibility required to protect today’s cloud-native workloads while preserving performance and reliability.
Visibility alone isn’t enough. The value comes from turning that telemetry into action. The Cortex XDR agent for cloud goes beyond monitoring, providing real-time protection, detection, and response without slowing down your environment.
Ready to see it for yourself? Request a demo to discover how Cortex Cloud CDR can protect your cloud environment.