A cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) has become a fundamental element of how organizations approach cloud security. But before getting into its increased importance in recent times, we need to understand a few things about the current threat landscape.
It’s interesting to learn that regardless of how advanced cybersecurity solutions have become, the attack surface in cloud-based environments continues to grow. InfoSec professionals (InfoSec) across the globe are actively looking for ways to address this increasingly complex problem.
One of the biggest hurdles to effectively securing cloud infrastructure revolves around two things:
- The improper use of the tools that are already available to security professionals.
- Leveraging reactive security strategies instead of entirely proactive and preventative methods.
Let’s focus on the first issue. Security teams already have access to powerful cloud security solutions, particularly cloud-native application protection platforms (CNAPP). While the tool offers a huge range of capabilities to boost cloud security, the question remains: Are InfoSec personnel truly harnessing the full potential of their CNAPP?
We at SecPod believe in transforming cybersecurity from reactive firefighting to proactive prevention. The key to driving the most value from your CNAPP solution lies in evolving from simply responding to cyber threats as and when they occur to preventing them altogether.
Let’s look at how a prevention-first mindset and a fully integrated CNAPP can revolutionize your cloud security strategy.
Missed Opportunities in Cloud Security and CNAPP Adoption
When fully utilized, cloud-native application protection platforms empower InfoSec teams to become modern-day superheroes of cloud security for their organizations. However, while many of them do currently deploy CNAPPs, they fail to integrate all their modules and functionalities into the existing stack. They often treat each capability like fragmented toolsets instead of a cohesive, all-encompassing part of the whole. Doing so undermines the platform’s ability to deliver the holistic, well-rounded protection it promises for cloud environments.
There are a few missed opportunities to discuss, but let’s begin with the second issue mentioned above: Reactive over proactive security.
- Detection over prevention: One of the main reasons businesses focus on detection rather than prevention is due to the pre-existing mindset that detecting cyber threats is more than enough to address them. It’s an ineffective approach that doesn’t offer InfoSec professionals the peace of mind they need to do their jobs as best as they can. Cost and resource constraints further play their part in disallowing the implementation of preventive security. It’s not easy — from an expertise and monetary perspective — to run continuous monitoring, penetration testing, and threat-hunting operations, especially for smaller organizations. Many InfoSec teams also follow the trend of treating cloud security as an exercise in responding to issues only after they arise, focusing heavily on detecting threats as they happen. But in a cloud environment, where threats evolve rapidly, detection alone is no longer enough. The proactive capabilities of CNAPPs, designed to prevent incidents before they materialize, are often overlooked due to this industry-wide culture.
- Lack of visibility without continuous monitoring: Fragmented data across diverse cloud platforms creates blind spots that attackers can exploit. Continuous visibility helps bring together actionable insights from all services running throughout an organization’s cloud environment. With this information, real-time detection of vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and anomalies becomes quicker and consumes fewer resources.
- Failure to enable or integrate CNAPP modules: CNAPPs are loaded with extensive capabilities, each designed to address the many elements of cloud security, like cloud security posture management (CSPM), cloud workload protection (CWP), and identity and access management (IAM). However, when only a subset of these features is used, the solution becomes less effective at doing its job and securing the cloud environment holistically. Overlooking CNAPP’s real-time monitoring and automated remediation capabilities further weakens its ability to protect businesses. Without integrated remediation, InfoSec professionals are typically unable to address vulnerabilities or misconfigurations in time. Integrated remediation empowers them to execute automated and streamlined remediation processes for efficient threat mitigation.
- The overwhelming nature of alert fatigue: Alert fatigue is unfortunately far too familiar a topic to cybersecurity professionals everywhere, and the familiarity does not diminish in the context of cloud security. As organizations deploy multiple security tools to safeguard their cloud environments, the sheer volume of alerts overwhelms security teams. This situation often causes desensitization, leading to the oversight of significant alerts. When alerts become excessive and frequently include false positives, the risk of ignoring genuine threats increases substantially.
Security professionals dedicate considerable time to managing alerts and distinguishing those that require immediate action from those that do not. The influx of notifications — many of which are either low priority or false positives — can contribute to burnout among team members. This overwhelming flow of information makes it challenging to maintain focus, and as a result, high-risk issues can be deprioritized or missed altogether. Traditional monitoring methods often fail to prioritize alerts effectively based on their severity or relevance. As a result, critical issues can become overshadowed by less significant notifications, complicating risk management and hindering timely resolution.
A Prevention-First Approach
As mentioned above, a proactive approach can seem expensive. Conversely, not implementing a preventative security strategy can lead to much more financial and reputation losses. And when compared, it becomes clear that prevention results in saving both. By leveraging a CNAPP’s full set of tools in an integrated and proactive way, InfoSec teams can move beyond merely detecting and responding to security incidents. They can start preventing cloud security issues before they even appear.
The benefits of prevention extend beyond immediate threat mitigation. Proactively securing an organization’s cloud environment can save it from operational disruptions and the monetary, legal, and reputational ramifications that follow cyberattacks. Additionally, CNAPPs help combat alert fatigue, a common challenge for security professionals. By integrating real-time monitoring and automated remediation, these platforms streamline alert management, enabling teams to focus on high-priority issues without being overwhelmed by low-value notifications. This enhances team morale and boosts operational efficiency, creating a proactive and sustainable security posture. With a prevention-first mindset, CNAPPs become indispensable assets for InfoSec teams, offering a way to stop threats before they ever get a foothold while reducing the cognitive burden on security personnel.
Unlocking CNAPP’s Potential Via Integrations
The key to effective cloud security lies in the integration of a cloud-native application protection program’s various modules. This allows InfoSec teams to monitor, prevent, and remediate threats across their cloud environments. When multiple modules — such as CWP, CSPM, and compliance enforcement — are enabled and integrated, CNAPPs provide a comprehensive view of the cloud environment and help prevent attacks before they occur.
Below are a few examples of the capabilities of application protection platforms when properly utilized.
CWPP: Safeguards applications, containers, and serverless environments in real-time, ensuring that workloads are not vulnerable to attacks.
CSPM: Constantly monitors cloud configurations to ensure they align with best practices and compliance regulations, preventing configuration errors that attackers could exploit.
IAM: Controls access to cloud resources in a cloud-native way, preventing unauthorized users from accessing sensitive information or critical systems.
Stopping Threats From Taking Shape
When CNAPP modules work together, they create a robust cloud security net. By detecting misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and anomalous behaviors long before they escalate into serious breaches, CNAPPs offer a well-rounded approach to cloud security that leaves little room for error. This integrated, prevention-first strategy ensures that risks and threats are minimized before they can impact business operations.
CNAPPs can transform your cloud security strategy from a traditional, reactive security infrastructure to one that is proactive. By fully integrating all their features, InfoSec teams can protect their organization against emerging threats in a comprehensive and efficient manner. With a prevention-first mindset and a fully utilized CNAPP, your cloud environment can become more secure, resilient, and prepared for the challenges of the modern threat landscape, disallowing the expansion of the attack surface.
CNAPPs Help Raise the Bar on Prevention-Based Risk Management
Effective risk management isn’t just about knowing what risks exist; it’s about prioritizing and acting on the ones that matter most. CNAPPs provide the tools needed to prioritize the highest risks and enable InfoSec teams to address them efficiently and reduce security complexity.
There are five steps to follow that will ensure your organization implements the best risk management strategies.
- Identifying key risks based on industry trends.
- Understanding how to address each risk.
- Assigning responsibilities to relevant security personnel.
- Recording and tracking changes in risk, i.e., using techniques like gap analysis, studying CSPM reports, and threat modeling.
- Monitoring — continuously or in intervals — and learning.
For security teams that know how to leverage their cloud-native application protection platforms effectively, developing and implementing strong risk management strategies following the above steps becomes streamlined and effective. CNAPPs provide InfoSec professionals with the ability to improve operations in the following areas:
- Risk visibility: CNAPPs provide a unified view of cloud assets, configurations, and potential risks. It provides actionable insights which, given the complexity of modern cloud infrastructures, simplifies the process of risk management. Such solutions help organizations maintain visibility across multicloud environments, because the average number of cloud providers per enterprise remains high.
- Prioritization: When you realize that 80% of companies worldwide have faced at least one cloud security incident so far in 2024, it’s clear that prioritizing risks is difficult. Prioritizing risks based on their potential impact can help security teams mitigate the most pressing threats first. Failure to identify misconfigurations and lack of security awareness training supports the fact that this approach can help avoid the leading causes of cloud data breaches.
- Preventive actions: Real-time monitoring and automated remediation are key to preventing security incidents. This proactive approach can change the game in a landscape where 45% of breaches are cloud-based.
The Role of Risk Management in Prevention
Risk management has to move from the mindset of just spotting flames and discovering where they’re coming from. The goal must be to anticipate and extinguish the embers before they can ignite. InfoSec professionals need to do more than recognize threats when they become apparent; they must actively seek out vulnerabilities and weaknesses as frequently as possible. By extinguishing embers before they grow into a fire, organizations can better protect themselves from the escalating impact of unaddressed risks.
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