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Kendo Shield vs agent-based platforms
Agents on every host see a lot, but they take time to roll out and something always gets missed. Kendo Shield starts agentless for full coverage on day one, and adds a lightweight sensor only where it earns its place: Kubernetes.
The short answer
Agentless-first gets you complete visibility in minutes. Where you need live workload telemetry, add Kendo Shield’s Helm-installed sensor to your clusters instead of agents on every machine.
The questions that matter
Question
Kendo ShieldAgent-everywhere platform
How long until we see findings?
StrongerMinutes: connect a read-only role and scanning starts.Depends on agent rollout across hosts, images and teams.
Will anything be missed?
StrongerEvery resource the cloud APIs can see is covered, including ones nobody remembered to instrument.Hosts without an agent are blind spots until someone installs one.
Is there a performance impact on workloads?
StrongerNone for cloud posture; the Kubernetes sensor runs with set resource limits.Agents use CPU and memory on every host they run on.
What access does it need?
StrongerRead-only cloud access; remediation is a separate, opt-in role scoped to each fix.Privileged agents on hosts, plus cloud access for posture.
How smart is runtime protection?
StrongerAI correlates raw runtime and cloud events into threat stories: one incident per attack, mapped to MITRE ATT&CK and explained in plain language, so analysts see fewer, higher-confidence alerts. The eBPF sensor blocks the malicious process in the kernel as it runs.Per-host agents can see and block processes on each machine, but typically raise an alert per event, leaving analysts to connect the dots and weed out false positives.
We mark the rows where the alternative is stronger. A comparison that never concedes anything isn’t worth reading.
When the alternative is the better fit
- You need process-level blocking on every VM and bare-metal host, not just in Kubernetes.
- You already run a mature EDR fleet and want posture added to the same agent.
Questions to ask any vendor
- What percentage of my estate will be covered on day one?
- What happens to hosts nobody installs the agent on?
- What CPU and memory does the agent use, and who maintains upgrades?
- What privileges do agents and cloud roles need?
See Kendo Shield on your own environment
Bring your own questions. We will answer them live, on your data, and you can judge for yourself.