Virtual Machine Threat Detection by Google Cloud opens for public preview

Google Cloud's new security solution called Virtual Machine Threat Detection has become available for public preview on the company's Security Command Center platform, ZDNet reports. Google Cloud Product Manager Timothy Peacock said virtual-machine based architectures are increasingly being used to handle workloads as enterprises keep moving to the cloud, making them high-value targets for cyberattackers and threat actors that deploy cryptocurrency malware. The most recent Google Threat Horizons report found 86% of compromised instances were exploited to mine cryptocurrency, which is why Google Cloud introduced Virtual Machine Threat Detection to enable agentless memory scanning via Security Command Center, which allows for collection of potential signs of cryptocurrency miner infections in addition to typical cloud vulnerabilities and misconfigurations being scanned for. "Traditional endpoint security relies on deploying software agents inside a guest virtual machine to gather signals and telemetry to inform runtime threat detection. But as is the case in many other areas of infrastructure security, cloud technology offers the ability to rethink existing models," Peacock said.