Cloud Storage Security (CSS) vs HAWK: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)

Short answer

Mid-market and enterprise teams storing sensitive data across AWS S3 and related services need Cloud Storage Security because its malware scanning actually runs inside your VPC, eliminating the risk of exfiltrating data to third-party scanning infrastructure. Fifteen-minute CloudFormation deployment and native integration with GuardDuty, Security Hub, and EventBridge mean you're detecting threats in your storage layer without rebuilding your monitoring stack. Skip this if you need a multi-cloud solution; CSS is AWS-native only, which is exactly why it works so well for shops committed to that ecosystem. Teams scanning cloud object storage for malware in multi-cloud environments should use HAWK for its API-first design that integrates directly into S3, Blob Storage, and Cloud Storage ingestion pipelines without agents or sidecars. The dual-engine approach using CLAMAV and YARA signatures catches both known malware and custom indicators, which is why it's genuinely useful for detecting compromised uploads before they propagate. Skip HAWK if you need behavioral detection or threat hunting; it's signature-based scanning only, so zero-days and polymorphic malware will slip through.