Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP)

 

A cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) is a unified cloud-based security and compliance solution built to defend cloud-native applications—from code to cloud. It empowers security teams to monitor, detect, and remediate vulnerabilities or cyber threats that could lead to potential data breaches.  

With an increasing number of businesses confidently migrating to the cloud, the conversation about cloud security has grown from a murmur to a full-fledged crescendo across the IT landscape. And there’s a good reason for that. Moving and operating applications in cloud-based environments opens many avenues for cybercriminals to take advantage and launch an attack.  

To start protecting your organization against today’s sophisticated cloud attacks, learning everything you need about cloud security is a beneficial idea. Let’s begin by understanding the basic technologies of cloud security, the first of which is a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP).  

What is CNAPP (Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform)?  

CNAPP security solutions streamline operations and enhance collaboration between security, development, and DevOps teams by integrating various security tools and capabilities into one comprehensive platform. A holistic CNAPP solution typically comprises cloud security posture management (CSPM), cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM), cloud workload protection platform (CWPP), and identity and access management (IAM), to name a few popular capabilities. Later, we will investigate each capability in depth. 

It also adds value to organizations that have adopted DevSecOps —­ it consolidates disparate capabilities and tools into a single software solution. In doing so, efficient collaboration among security, DevOps, and DevSecOps teams is enabled.  

Why is CNAPP important?  

CNAPP security solutions are quickly becoming highly sought after, considering the large attack surface of cloud and hybrid environments. The reason revolves around the fact that conventional approaches to security were developed to safeguard on-premises infrastructure, such as data centers, servers, and local networks. These traditional security measures were designed to protect physical assets and control access to information within a controlled environment.  

More importantly, most organizations maintain a more reactive response to cloud-native security, where security personnel address incidents or threats as one-time problems instead of looking at cloud security as a holistic entity. A cloud-native application protection platform can assist in proactively addressing cloud security. 

Listed below are a few examples of why you need CNAPP. 

  • Comprehensive security throughout the application lifecycle: Application protection platforms offer end-to-end security, protecting cloud-native applications from development to production. This guarantees the integration of a security layer into the entire CI/CD software development lifecycle, thereby mitigating the risk of vulnerabilities and data breaches. 
  • Enhanced compliance: By providing visibility into vulnerabilities, risks, and non-compliant configurations, CNAPPs help organizations identify and address potential issues, such as sensitive data exposures, to meet requirements like GDPR or HIPAA. 
  • Improved collaboration and efficiency: They facilitate collaboration between security teams, developers, DevOps, and DevSecOps. By consolidating various security tools and capabilities into a single platform, CNAPPs streamline operations and improve efficiency, allowing organizations to build, deploy, and run secure cloud-native applications more effectively in today’s dynamic cloud environments. 

What are the components of CNAPP?  

We’ve talked about a CNAPP’s ability to unify various tools and capabilities across a cloud-based architecture to improve an organization’s cloud security posture, but what are they? Let’s look at what a typical application protection platform for the cloud comprises.  

Cloud security posture management (CSPM)  

Cloud security posture management (CSPM) is both a security practice and a tool. CSPM is designed as a software to help security professionals automate and streamline the process of hardening their cloud IT. CSPM helps organizations reduce the risk of security incidents like ransomware attacks or data breaches by detecting, preventing, and remediating misconfigurations quickly.  

Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) scanning and compliance and governance make up two significant parts of CSPM.  

  • IaC Scanning: Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) is a method of managing and provisioning cloud infrastructure using code. IaC scanning is the process of analyzing IaC templates, such as Terraform and AWS CloudFormation, to identify potential security vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and deviations from best practices. Early identification of potential security risks before deployment, adherence to industry standards and regulations in cloud infrastructure configuration, and automation of security assessment processes reduce manual effort through IaC scanning. 
  • Compliance and governance: Going beyond the role of improving security, CSPM solutions allow organizations to better enforce compliance policies on their cloud-based resources and processes. An ideal CSPM solution empowers security teams to address any non-compliance with real-time alerts and information. Often, CSPM tools are designed to offer extensive guidance and steps for remediation as well, effectuating a healthy cloud security posture.  

Cloud infrastructure and entitlement management (CIEM)  

Cloud infrastructure and entitlement management (CIEM) addresses one of the most prevalent security flaws in public cloud installations: inadequate control over identities and privileges. CIEM primarily helps organizations detect and manage access rights to cloud resources. It constantly monitors entities’ activities and permissions to ensure they adhere to the proper access rules.  

In the cloud environment, CIEM prevents excessive entitlements. It offers a centralized dashboard that manages entitlements for all cloud applications. Moreover, CIEM aids in risk mitigation and acts as a crucial tool to get ahead of any upcoming security challenges. This all-inclusive cloud security strategy reduces unauthorized access and data breaches by managing entitlements.  

Cloud workload protection platform (CWPP)  

A cloud workload protection platform (CWPP) does much heavy lifting when it comes to cloud security. It’s a powerful solution that safeguards an organization’s cloud infrastructure workloads from services like virtual machines (VM), API containers, SQL and NoSQL databases, and Kubernetes from potential security threats. Any workloads deployed in an organization’s cloud environment receive multiple layers of protection from this solution. After this, a CWPP automatically carries out assessments, monitors networks, detects issues, and ensures compliance with in-house policies or controls.  

In short, CWPPs identify and propose alterations or improvements to reduce cyber threats while operational workflows continue undisturbed and uninterrupted.  

Data protection  

Data protection concentrates on protecting sensitive data stored in cloud environments from theft, loss, or unauthorized access. In this context, CNAPP’s key functionalities include data classification, encryption, and access controls to protect data throughout its lifecycle. With regard to data classification, cloud security professionals can better identify sensitive information, enabling them to implement appropriate security measures; encryption guarantees that data is unreadable to unauthorized parties, even if it is compromised; and access controls restrict access to sensitive data based on specific user roles and permissions.  

Identity and access management (IAM)  

A complementary function to CIEM, identity and access management (IAM) for cloud environments enables security professionals to manage user identities, authentication, and authorization. The cloud-based counterpart, like on-premises IAM, focuses on allowing access to authorized individuals only. 

Cloud data protection and IAM are closely related, but the nuances explained above help distinguish the two with clarity.  

What are the benefits of CNAPP?  

CNAPPs are comprehensive, all-encompassing solutions that provide users with holistic cloud security at a granular level. This gives security professionals confidence in their efforts to maintain their containerized, serverless, and ephemeral environments. Some of the biggest advantages of cloud-native application protection platforms are listed below. 

  • It’s a one-stop cloud security platform. It streamlines collaboration by detecting and correlating security events, providing intuitive visualizations, and offering actionable insights. CNAPPs reduce complexity and resource utilization by consolidating multiple-point solutions, CNAPPs reduce intricacy and the utilization of resources, offering a unified view of risk across configurations, assets, permissions, code, and cloud workloads. 

 

  • Offers extensive visibility and recommendations: Application protection platforms provide deep insight into every element across your entire multi-cloud environment, including IaaS, PaaS, and serverless workloads. This enables early identification and remediation of risks throughout the development lifecycle. 

 

  • Significantly quickens security initiatives: CNAPPs integrate with IDE platforms and SecOps ecosystems, which makes way for seamless collaboration between security and DevOps teams. This facilitates faster identification of misconfigurations and compliance issues during development and CI/CD, triggering alerts and workflows to ensure timely remediation. 

  

  • Promotes a DevSecOps culture: By distributing security responsibility across the development lifecycle, CNAPPs help organizations adopt the DevSecOps approach with more ease. Through native integrations with existing tools, CNAPPs inject security controls at every stage of the DevOps cycle, empowering developers to take ownership of security and reducing friction between security and DevOps teams. 

How does CNAPP work?  

Now that you have a deeper understanding of CNAPP, let’s briefly look at how it all comes together and performs in a cloud-based network architecture.  

Data ingestion:  

CNAPP collects data from a variety of sources within the cloud environment, including:  

  • Cloud providers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).  
  • Infrastructure components: VMs, containers, and network devices.  
  • Applications: custom-built or third-party applications.  
  • Security tools: firewalls and intrusion detection systems.  

Data analysis:  

CNAPP analyzes the collected data to identify potential security threats and vulnerabilities, which generally include:  

  • Vulnerability scanning: Detecting and prioritizing known vulnerabilities in cloud resources.  
  • Configuration assessment: Comparing cloud configurations against security best practices and standards.  
  • Behavior analysis: Identifying anomalous activity that may indicate a security threat.  

Threat detection:  

Leveraging machine learning and other advanced techniques to detect threats in real-time, CNAPP helps improve threat detection in the following ways.  

  • It identifies and blocks ransomware attempts.  
  • Detects unauthorized access to sensitive data.  
  • Identifies deviations from security best practices to rectify misconfigurations.  

Incident response  

When a threat is detected, CNAPP can trigger automated response actions, such as:  

  • Blocking malicious activity to prevent further damage.  
  • Remediating vulnerabilities by applying patches or configuration changes.  
  • Notifying stakeholders and alerting security teams and other relevant personnel.  

Continuous monitoring  

An ideal CNAPP continuously monitors the cloud environment for new threats and vulnerabilities, guaranteeing that security measures remain effective. Integrating various cloud components and leveraging advanced analytics provides a comprehensive solution for protecting cloud-based applications and data. 

CNAPP FAQs 

How does a CNAPP differ from traditional security tools? 

Unlike traditional security tools focusing on specific areas (e.g., endpoint or perimeter security), CNAPPs are purpose-built for cloud-native architectures. They offer a unified approach by integrating multiple security functions like cloud security posture management (CSPM), runtime protection, and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) scanning in a single platform. 

Can CNAPP work across multicloud environments? 

Yes, CNAPP solutions are designed to provide comprehensive security and visibility across multicloud and hybrid environments, allowing organizations to manage security uniformly across platforms like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and on-premises data centers. 

How do CNAPP solutions handle runtime security? 

CNAPPs provide runtime protection by monitoring active workloads for suspicious behaviors, applying rules for intrusion detection and prevention, and isolating compromised components. This ensures that threats are mitigated in real-time without disrupting application performance. 

How does CNAPP leverage Identity and Access Management (IAM) for enhanced security? 

CNAPP monitors IAM roles, permissions, and activity to enforce the principle of least privilege. It identifies overly permissive roles, unused access rights, and potential identity-based threats, providing insights and automated recommendations to reduce access risks. 

How does CNAPP integrate with Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tools? 

CNAPP platforms integrate with popular IaC tools like Terraform, CloudFormation, and Ansible to scan templates for security risks and misconfigurations before deployment. They apply security policies to IaC files, enabling early detection of vulnerabilities and enforcing compliance in the build pipeline. 

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