An agentless connector is an integration that gathers cloud data through provider APIs instead of installing software on servers, containers, or virtual machines. It is commonly used for inventory, configuration checks, compliance reporting, and exposure mapping across multiple cloud accounts.
This approach matters because it can be deployed quickly and with less operational overhead than host-based agents. In security products such as CSPM and CNAPP platforms, agentless connectors help teams see misconfigurations, public exposure, weak IAM permissions, and missing logging without touching every workload. That makes them useful for rapid onboarding and broad visibility in multicloud environments. The tradeoff is that the connector’s effectiveness depends on API permissions, account scope, and the accuracy of what the cloud control plane exposes. Attackers may benefit if a defender’s connector is too narrowly scoped and misses risky resources; defenders rely on it to find drift and attack paths before they are exploited.