Securing the edge: Harnessing Falco's power with Elastic Security for cloud workload protection

At Elastic, we recognize the critical need for securing containerized applications in Kubernetes and cloud environments. To enhance runtime security, we’ve integrated Falco—an open-source cloud-native security tool—directly with Elastic Security. Falco leverages Linux kernel events and plugins to detect abnormal behavior, security threats, and compliance violations across hosts, containers, and Kubernetes clusters.

Building on our recent expansion of cloud security protections using CNCF open-source tools, this research details how the Falco and Elastic Security integration strengthens threat detection at the edge. By introducing dedicated Falco connectors, we enhance cloud workload protection and endpoint security, complementing existing integrations with major EDR providers like SentinelOne, CrowdStrike, and Microsoft Defender.

In this blog, we explore key aspects of the integration, from setup and rule-based detection to event ingestion and centralized alert management in Kibana. We also demonstrate practical use cases through attack simulations to showcase Falco’s role in modern cloud security.

Are you interested in this research? Our full paper is available at Elastic!