Falco: The Secret Weapon for Runtime Security

Let's dive deep into Falco, the most popular runtime security agent for your cloud-native applications.

You're in the right place if you want to improve your cloud-native security, especially in detecting suspicious activities within your Kubernetes (K8s) runtime. Falco detects suspicious activity through kernel events, from unauthorized process executions to API misuse. We’ll walk through Falco's predefined and customizable rules and how to extend them using FalcoSidekick to send alerts to systems like Slack, Dynatrace, or even trigger workflows with Talon.

What you'll learn in this episode:
Why runtime security is crucial for K8s environments
A breakdown of common suspicious events to monitor in your Kubernetes cluster
Introduction to Falco and how it leverages eBPF for real-time threat detection
The syntax and structure of Falco rules to tailor your security needs
How FalcoSidekick can streamline event reporting and integrate with your observability tools

Topics covered:
Falco overview and architecture
Detecting malicious container activity (like privilege escalation and traffic sniffing)
How to build and customize Falco rules
Sending Falco logs to various backends using FalcoSidekick
Observing Falco’s health and performance metrics

🔗 Useful links
GitHub tutorial: https://dt-url.net/up03u2g
Falco: https://falco.org
Falco default rule: https://falco.org/docs/reference/rule...
Falco Supported fields: https://falco.org/docs/reference/rule...
Falco Sidekick: https://github.com/falcosecurity/falc...
Dynatrace Trial: https://bit.ly/3KxWDvY
Blog: https://isitobservable.io/observabili...

📖 Chapters 📖
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00:00 Introduction to the video
05:22 Overview of Falco and its architecture
08:56 Introduction to the Falco rules
12:38 What is FalcoSidekick and how to use it
15:08 Observing Falco's health and performance
18:40 Conclusion and takeaways
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