ADR vs. CDR: Why Application Detection and Response is the Key to Stopping Modern Attacks

Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) helps detect cloud-based threats, but Application Detection and Response (ADR) addresses the most exploited attack vector—vulnerabilities in application code. Here’s why ADR is critical for securing modern applications.

Cloud security has evolved rapidly, with CDR becoming a standard tool for identifying cloud-based threats. However, one of the most commonly exploited attack vectors isn’t cloud misconfigurations but vulnerabilities within application code itself. This is where ADR comes in.

While CDR provides valuable cloud-wide visibility, the majority of data in-scope from CDR comes straight from cloud providers' control planes. Aside from workload detections, all CDR vendors access the same types of data from CSPs and primarily differentiate through their correlation logic, visualization, and reporting. ADR, on the other hand, is fundamentally different: it generates new data by actively monitoring application behavior at runtime, making its detection capabilities inherently unique.

What is Cloud Detection and Response (CDR)?

CDR solutions focus on monitoring, detecting, and responding to threats within cloud environments. They leverage cloud-native data sources like audit logs, API activity, and access patterns to identify suspicious behavior. Many CDR solutions now also include an eBPF agent which will correlate workload detections with cloud events.

The rise of CDR is due to the many challenges associated with identifying threats in dynamic, ephemeral cloud environments. These include:

1. Visibility into ephemeral workloads: containers, serverless functions, etc
2. Multi-cloud visibility: CDR solutions can aggregate threat activity across multiple cloud providers
3. Identity and access risks: monitoring for anomalies such as privilege escalation or unusual login occasions
4. Lateral movement and persistence: identifying MFA bypasses, gaining persistence, and more
5. Compliance: audit logs of cloud activity is often needed for compliance and regulations 

‍CDR benefits include:

• Detection of unauthorized access, misconfigurations, and API abuse
• Cloud-wide visibility across infrastructure, including multi-cloud architectures
• Supporting compliance and regulatory efforts by logging cloud events
  

CDR Limitations

CDRs primarily work with the same control-plane data as other CDR vendors, meaning differentiation is limited to how this data is correlated, rather than generating net-new insights.

1. CDR solutions focus on infrastructure rather than application-layer vulnerabilities. This means that CDRs are used primarily as reactive tools for investigations—detecting threats after they have impacted the cloud environment.
2. Response actions in CDR solutions are also limited to the infrastructure and cloud entity level. Common response actions include killing a container, revoking a role, or blocking malicious traffic. While this may limit the “blast radius” of an attack, it doesn’t stop initial web app exploits outright.

What is Application Detection and Response (ADR)?

ADR (Application Detection and Response) focuses on identifying and stopping attacks at the application level, where many breaches originate. Unlike CDR, which interprets existing data, ADR generates new telemetry from the application itself, monitoring runtime behavior to detect actual exploit attempts at the code level.

ADR solves many challenges in identifying threats to applications themselves. These include:

1. Application blindspots: application attacks are on the rise, and attackers know if they can exploit vulnerabilities at the application level they can remain undetected for a long time, covering their tracks as they go. 
2. Limited success from older runtime protection methods: traditionally, Web Application Firewall (WAF) and Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) solutions have been limited in efficacy and very hard to deploy to identify and stop application attacks.  RASP proved to be too resource-hungry, impacted application performance, and posed operational challenges, limiting it to specific pre-production use cases.  WAFs can no longer keep up with the multitude of application threats, and serve as “first-line” defenses only.
3. Detecting OWASP top-10 (and beyond) and zero-day exploits: identifying common web application security risks (i.e. code injection and execution, service side request forgery, logic abuse, and more) in addition to zero-day vulnerabilities remains a challenge for nearly every security team.
4. Protecting against growing supply chain risks: applications are increasingly relying on open-source libraries and third-party software. ADR solutions can detect exactly how third party and open source software are used, including which components are executed and vulnerable. This simplifies software supply chain risk and drastically reduces the noise of which vulnerabilities actually introduce risk.
5. Keeping pace with attackers: reacting to CDR logs, WAF alerts, and more is often too late in the case of application attacks- the damage is already done. Since ADR has application-level telemetry, it can give AppSec and SecOps teams the data it needs in real-time to mitigate or prevent cyberattacks altogether.

ADR benefits include:

• Ability to detect and respond to attacks at the application layer, where most attacks originate 
• Vulnerability backlog reduction by identifying vulnerabilities that are actively exploitable versus theoretical
• Prevention of exploitation before it spreads to the broader cloud environment: leading ADR solutions can prevent malicious function calls to stop an exploit outright

The Real Attack Vector: Why ADR Matters More

Attackers increasingly target application-layer vulnerabilities because they offer direct paths to sensitive data and systems. 

What do Log4Shell, Polykill, Spring4Shell, Apache Struts, and so many other celebrity vulnerabilities have in common? They are attacks that don’t leverage a cloud misconfiguration – they exploit an application-level flaw that allows for remote code execution (RCE).

ADR is better suited for handling these types of threats because it:

• Monitors applications in real-time, detecting exploitation attempts as they happen
• Focuses on runtime behavior, rather than static vulnerability scanning
• Creates unique detection rule sets, rather than relying on the same shared cloud data as every other vendor

Why Security Teams Need Both—But Should Prioritize ADR

While CDR provides value in detecting cloud-wide threats, it does not address the most common attack vector: application vulnerabilities. ADR fills this gap by proactively identifying and stopping application-layer exploits, making it a critical component of modern security strategies.

For security teams looking to strengthen their defense, ADR offers the unique advantage of generating new security data, rather than relying on the same control-plane logs as every other CDR vendor. Combining both CDR and ADR can provide comprehensive security, but investing in ADR is essential for stopping the attacks that matter most.

The Path Forward

Cloud security requires more than just infrastructure monitoring—it demands real-time protection where attackers strike most: the application layer. ADR provides a proactive, runtime-driven approach to stopping modern exploits, making it an essential tool for any security team serious about reducing their risk.

To learn more about how ADR can enhance your security posture, reach out to us at Oligo.