Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP)
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP)
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 helps security teams monitor, detect, and fix vulnerabilities or cyber threats that could lead to potential data leaks.
With an increasing number of businesses moving to the cloud, naturally, the conversation about cloud security has grown from a murmur to a full-fledged crescendo. And there’s a good reason for that. However, 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 solutions streamline operations and enhance collaboration between security, development, and DevOps teams by integrating various security tools and capabilities into one comprehensive platform. Specifically, a holistic CNAPP solution typically includes 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 in this blog, we will investigate each capability in depth.
It also adds value to organizations that have adopted DevSecOps — it combines different capabilities and tools into a single software solution. Consequently, efficient collaboration among security, DevOps, and DevSecOps teams is enabled.
Why is CNAPP important?
CNAPP security solutions are in high demand, mostly because cloud and hybrid environments present a large attack surface. This is primarily because traditional security approaches were designed to protect on-premises infrastructure like 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, in many organizations, most maintain a more reactive response to cloud-native security. Security personnel address incidents or threats as one-time problems instead of looking at cloud security holistically. A cloud-native application protection platform can assist organizations looking to proactively address cloud security.
For example, 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 reducing 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 combining multiple security tools into one platform, CNAPPs simplify operations and boost efficiency. As a result, organizations can more effectively build, deploy, and manage secure cloud-native applications in dynamic cloud environments.
What are the components of CNAPP?
We’ve covered how a CNAPP unifies tools in a cloud architecture to strengthen security, but how does it work? Let’s look at what a typical application protection platform for the cloud includes.
Cloud security posture management (CSPM)
Cloud security posture management (CSPM) is both a security practice and a tool. Specifically, CSPM is designed as a software to help security professionals automate and streamline the process of hardening their cloud IT. Furthermore, CSPM helps organizations reduce the risk of security incidents like ransomware attacks or data leaks by detecting, preventing, and remediating misconfigurations quickly. As a result, it strengthens the overall security of cloud environments..
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, along with 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. More importantly, an ideal CSPM solution helps security teams to address any non-compliance with real-time alerts and information. Additionally, CSPM tools are often designed to offer extensive guidance and steps for remediation as well, which ultimately results in a stronger 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, namely 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.
For instance, in cloud environments, CIEM prevents users from having too many permissions. It also offers a central dashboard to manage permissions for all cloud applications. Additionally, CIEM helps reduce risks and acts as an important tool to stay ahead of future security challenges. This simple and clear cloud security method blocks unknown access and stops data leaks by managing permissions.
Cloud workload protection platform (CWPP)
A cloud workload protection platform (CWPP) does much heavy lifting when it comes to cloud security. Essentially, it’s a powerful solution that safeguards a 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.
To sum up, CWPPs identify and suggest changes or improvements to reduce cyber threats while allowing operations to keep running smoothly without any stops.
Data protection
Data protection focuses on keeping sensitive information in cloud environments safe from theft, loss, or illegal access. Therefore, in this context, CNAPP’s key features include sorting data, coding it for security, and controlling access to keep it safe throughout its lifecycle. Specifically, when it comes to sorting data, cloud security experts can easily find sensitive information, which helps them apply the right security steps. Additionally, coding ensures that data cannot be read by illegal users, even if it is stolen. Finally, access controls limit who can see sensitive information 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. Similarly, the cloud-based counterpart, like on-premises IAM, focuses on allowing access to authorized individuals only.
Cloud data protection and IAM are closely related, yet, 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 means that it enhances the confidence of security professionals in their ability to maintain containerized, serverless, and ephemeral environments. For instance, some of the biggest advantages of cloud-native application protection platforms are listed below.
- It’s a one-stop cloud security platform: It simplifies teamwork by finding and connecting security events, showing clear visuals, and offering practical insights. Furthermore, CNAPPs reduce complexity and resource utilization by consolidating multiple-point solutions. Additionally, they 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 multicloud environment, including IaaS, PaaS, and serverless workloads. This enables early identification and remediation of risks throughout the development lifecycle. Consequently, these improvements help organizations maintain a healthier security posture.
- 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, allowing 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, naturally, it’s time to 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 several important 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, thus, guaranteeing that security measures remain effective. By integrating various cloud components and leveraging advanced analytics, ultimately, it 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. More importantly, 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, thereby 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 stopped instantly without affecting 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, while also 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. Furthermore, they apply security policies to IaC files, enabling early detection of vulnerabilities and enforcing compliance in the build pipeline.