What is a CNAPP (cloud-native application protection platform)?

CNAPPs help ensure application security, network security and regulatory compliance in cloud and multicloud environments. They allow organizations to defend sensitive data against a range of security threats, including data breaches, malware attacks and other security issues, across public clouds, private clouds and on-premises infrastructure. 

CNAPPs incorporate various cloud security solutions, so functions might vary between different offerings. Generally, they incorporate several proactive and reactive security capabilities, including the following:

• Artifact scanning: Automatically checks code against databases of known vulnerabilities to proactively identify potential security issues ahead of deployment. 

• Security guardrails: Establishes custom and standard security protocols with tools to automatically apply predefined security measures where applicable (or flag areas where security is insufficient). 

• Configuration and compliance management tools: Identifies and prevents any misconfigurations or noncompliant security practices at a high level to help ensure data security and avoid regulatory penalties. 

• Risk detection and prioritization: Risk detection and prioritization help surface any potential vulnerabilities and identify the most urgent issues.  

• User behavior analytics (UBA): UBA tools use data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to create models of typical on-network user behavior and detect any deviations that might indicate a security threat. 

CNAPPs offer real-time visibility across cloud environments to identify and respond to security risks and vulnerabilities throughout the development lifecycle. Offering API integrations with leading cloud providers such as IBM Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, CNAPP solutions integrate within the CI/CD pipeline to provide both agent and agent-less workload protections for holistic security from code creation to runtime execution.

Originally conceptualized by research and consulting firm Gartner, CNAPP security platforms integrate various cloud-native security applications—that have traditionally been deployed individually—into one single platform.

Instead of the traditional siloed security approach, a CNAPP platform combines and streamlines multiple cloud security tools to offer comprehensive visibility, threat detection and remediation for security teams supervising cloud platforms. 

Depending on an organization’s requirements, different CNAPP frameworks might be better suited for different use cases. With some variation, most CNAPPs offer a minimum set of security functions designed to safeguard cloud applications from initial code development to final deployment. 

Designed to protect cloud resources and provide application security (AppSec), the best CNAPP works by meeting an organization’s unique needs. At a minimum, an effective CNAPP will monitor and reduce an organization’s potential attack surface, eliminate potential security uncertainties and improve their overall security posture. As such, the best CNAPP is the one that is best suited for an organization’s given requirements.

To meet the varying needs of different use cases, vendors might offer varying levels of service, however, a sufficient CNAPP can be expected to provide most of these key components.

CSPM gives organizations the ability to continuously monitor cloud infrastructure, infrastructure as code (IaC) and other cloud resources, automatically implementing security controls based on predefined security policies.

CSPM is useful for surfacing any vulnerabilities or misconfigurations, enabling organizations to easily assess the state of their cloud security and address any threats or compliance risks that might exist.   

A CWPP is designed to specifically protect cloud workloads such as containers, virtual machines (VMs), Kubernetes, databases, APIs and serverless functions (as well as the associated data and processes required to accomplish tasks within the cloud environment).

Some CWPPs attach virtual agents to each workload, but modern agent-less CWPPs provide blanket coverage. Both types of CWPPs offer runtime protection for all workloads deployed within the cloud environment. 

CIEM tools are used for managing identities in single and multicloud environments, including access rights, privileges and permissions. By integrating CIEM, CNAPPs gain critical access management to enforce the principle of least privilege, which limits users and services to access only what is necessary for their roles.

CIEM tools identify and prevent any unintended or excessive permissions and prevent any associated threats or data breaches. They are considered to be a critical component of an organization's greater identity and access management (IAM) program and valuable for enabling a safer, zero-trust security approach.

CDR systems actively monitor cloud environments for suspicious activity. When such activity is identified, a CDR will trigger an automated incident response for real-time threat remediation.  

CSNS solutions are designed to address network vulnerabilities and include tools to strengthen web application firewalls, secure web gateways and provide protection against DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. 

Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform for scheduling and automating containerized applications. KSPM tools are designed to monitor, assess and secure Kubernetes environments, ensuring data protection and regulatory compliance through configuration validation, cluster penetration testing and benchmarking.  

Specifically focused on securing applications predeployment, ASPM applies essential contextual information to applications in the development stage in order to identify and resolve any potential vulnerabilities that might arise once an application is deployed. 

DSPM monitors the way data is stored, transmitted and secured in a cloud environment, helping organizations track, manage and safeguard their sensitive data by enforcing security guardrails and maintaining regulatory compliance. 

IaC tools help organizations define their cloud architecture by using configuration files instead of (or in addition to) actual code. IaC tools scan configuration files for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, minimizing unintended network exposures, privileges and compliance violations. IaC scanning can be automated or started manually.

With the proliferation of cloud services and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) comes extensive security challenges for operations seeking to maintain data security and avoid costly regulatory compliance violations. Cloud services provide ideal production environments for software development and application development—offering improved time to market without the high costs associated with physical hardware or supply chains. 

However, for organizations relying on cloud service providers (CSP), security becomes a shared responsibility. CNAPPs allow organizations to protect their cloud resources throughout the application lifecycle. CNAPPs provide key cybersecurity features such as endpoint management and workload protection—all collected into a single interface. This streamlined approach lowers overhead associated with multiple managers overseeing individual pieces of the overall cloud security posture. 

Complex cloud environments come with a wide array of security challenges and a continuous stream of new and dynamic components to validate, secure, test and deploy. While the cloud offers unparalleled flexibility and convenience, it also introduces a multitude of new attack vectors and potential vulnerabilities, presenting several challenges for security teams. The following are some of the key security challenges that CNAPPs help address:

• Siloed security operations: Organizations have historically taken a piecemeal approach to cloud security, assembling parts of a CNAPP (such as data security posture management or Kubernetes security posture management) as stand-alone tools. This inelegant approach requires more resources, increases overhead and results in less optimized overall security implementation. By integrating these disparate tools into one platform, CNAPPs improve and normalize security practices across the entire cloud infrastructure and development pipeline. Unifying these individual features into a centralized tool requires less resources and reduces overall overhead.

• Security uncertainties: CNAPPs help organizations gain improved visibility over their entire cloud infrastructure. They offer hybrid agent-based and agent-less security features to closely monitor the most critical workloads and provide strong blanket protections where resource availability prevents agent-based monitoring. 

• Alert fatigue: While siloed security tools can identify certain types of vulnerabilities, they are often unable to contextualize the degree to which those vulnerabilities might become serious threats. Without a full picture, stand-alone security tools struggle to sufficiently prioritize potential issues, resulting in excessive, but low-priority alerts. When security managers are required to identify the most pertinent alerts among the “noise,” alert fatigue can result in human error. 

• Operational friction: All too frequently, DevOps teams are under tremendous pressure to develop and deploy new cloud resources and applications. In this time crunch, collaboration between developers and the DevSecOps teams responsible for maintaining operational security is often a source of friction, reducing time to market. CNAPPs help DevOps and DevSecOps teams work together to automatically embed cloud security best practices earlier in the development pipeline. 

As an all-in-one cloud security solution, CNAPPs package the benefits associated with CSPM, CWPP and CIEM tools into a simplified, single application. By tightly integrating these traditionally stand-alone platforms, CNAPPs can optimize individual and holistic security measures to better prevent, detect and respond to threats and vulnerabilities. 

CNAPPs also support a “shift-left” approach to cybersecurity that promotes integrating security testing earlier within the development process. Also, they can help improve workflows between DevOps teams and DevSecOps teams. 

Some of the key benefits of a CNAPP include the following:

• Improved cybersecurity: Integrates security within the cloud environment, giving organizations better protection against cyberthreats. As cloud environments grow increasingly common and complex, cloud-native security becomes more important for securing sprawling hybrid and multicloud systems. 

• Centralized management: Allows organizations to assess and manage their entire cloud footprint at once.

• Improved visibility: Provides better insight into cloud environments, reducing uncertainties and highlighting any security vulnerabilities or noncompliant regulatory issues. 

• Advanced threat detection: Flags potential flaws, vulnerabilities or misconfigurations in the production pipeline from development to deployment.

• Automation: Automates various types of security scans and threat responses, and broadly applies internal security standards where applicable. 

• Shift-left security: Promotes a left-shifted security approach, adding rigorous security testing and controls as early on in the development pipeline as possible. As such, the best way to reduce vulnerabilities within a cloud system is to catch and prevent them before they arise. 

• Streamlined security: Simplifies security operations to reduce strain on security teams and reduce the overhead required to manage individual security solutions.