Workload ML Policy

Sysdig’s Workload ML (Machine Learning) policy is used to provide a second layer of defense to complete the deep and exact coverage that Falco provides with a broader statistics-based approach.

Key Features

  • Machine learning collects low-level activities from your infrastructure, aggregating them over time and applying algorithms.
  • With machine learning policies, you can configure the detections you want to use and their thresholds.
  • Machine learning detection algorithms estimate the probability that those activities are related to the detection subjects, i.e. miners. The Sysdig Workload ML detections don’t rely on mere program names or executable checksums matching. Instead, they are based on runtime behaviors, collected as fingerprints by the Profiling feature.

Event notifications are generally limited to a frequency of once every five minutes. For details, see Message Throttling in Sysdig Secure.

Enable Workload ML

Prerequisites

The Workload ML policy requires the profiling feature to be enabled to activate the underlying fingerprint collection mechanism.

If you are using Sysdig agent v.12.15+, this option is automatically enabled.

To enable/disable manually, see Profiling.

Configure Workload ML Custom Policy

In the Sysdig Secure UI:

  1. Select Policies > Threat Detection|Runtime Policies to display the Runtime Policies page.

  2. Click +Add Policy (at the top right of the page).

  3. Select the Workload ML policy type.

  4. Configure the policy:

    Basic Parameters

    Name: Enter a policy name

    Description: Provide a meaningful and searchable description

    Enabled/Disabled: Toggle to enable the policy so that it generates events.

    Severity: Choose the appropriate severity level as you would like to see it in the Runtime Policies UI: High, Medium, Low, Info

    Policy severity is subjective and is used to group policies within a Sysdig Secure instance.

    Note: There is no inheritance between the underlying rule priorities and the severity you assign to the policy.

    Scope: Define the scope to which the policy will apply, based on the type-dependent options listed.

    Link to Runbook: (Optional) Enter the URL of a company procedure that should be followed for events resulting from this policy. For example: https://www.mycompany.com/our-runbook-link.

    If you enter a value here, then a View Runbook option will be displayed in any corresponding Event.

    Detect

    You can choose what type of Machine Learning-based detections you want enable in your policy. We support only Crypto Mining Detection at this time.

    Crypto Mining Detection: The supported detection type

    Confidence Level Enablement: Fine-tune the policy to choose at which certainty level the detection should trigger an event.

    Severity defined at detection level, so that you can have a different severity for each detection type.

    Actions

    Notify: Select a notification channel from the drop-down list for sending notification of events to appropriate personnel.

    See also: Set Up Notification Channels.