Agentless visibility is cloud inspection that collects security data without installing an agent on each workload. Instead of running software inside every VM, container, or service, the platform gathers information from cloud APIs, snapshots, metadata, and control-plane signals. This makes onboarding faster and reduces the operational burden of managing agents across a large or changing estate.
In cyber security, agentless visibility matters because it gives defenders broad coverage early, especially in cloud environments with many accounts and short-lived resources. It can reveal exposed storage, risky permissions, vulnerable images, and misconfigurations that create attack paths. Security teams often use it in CNAPP and CSPM tools to build inventory and prioritize risk. The tradeoff is that agentless methods may see less of what happens during live execution, so they are often paired with runtime sensors when deeper behavioral detection is needed.