Agentless security uses APIs, cloud control planes, or built-in management interfaces to inspect and protect assets without installing a software agent on each host, container, or workload. In cloud environments, this often means reading configuration, identity, network, and storage data directly from the provider rather than from software running inside the resource.
This model matters because it is fast to deploy, easier to scale across multi-cloud estates, and avoids the maintenance burden of agent rollout, updates, and compatibility issues. Defenders use agentless tools for cloud posture management, asset inventory, and attack-path analysis. Attackers also benefit from weak cloud API permissions, so agentless defenses depend on strong authentication, least privilege, and careful API access controls. Used well, agentless inspection reduces blind spots; used poorly, it can miss runtime behavior that only an in-guest agent would see.