As more companies gravitate to cloud and cloud-native applications, a holistic security solution is crucial for the all-around protection of applications and infrastructure that support it. Companies have managed this through siloed solutions so far, but they are now keen on comprehensive solutions like cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) to establish impermeable cloud environments. This latest addition to the acronym-filled security world aims to be the one-stop solution for cloud security.

One-stop solution for complete cloud-native application security

Multi-cloud environments are like machines with thousands of moving parts. There are ephemeral components such as containers and developing, deploying, and running hundreds of applications connected through APIs throughout the day, with terabytes of data flowing around. Spread across multiple geographies, cloud environments cannot afford to be down even for a few seconds. 

Comprehensive security for the cloud, no wonder, is complicated.

G2 data highlights strong interest in cloud security

The popularity of the cloud security software space has grown, as reflected in traffic data to these categories on G2. For example, traffic to G2’s Cloud Workload Protection Platforms category has increased by 3 times,  while that for the Cloud Compliance Software category has increased by 1.5 times in the last two years.

However, these are point solutions working in silos. Even when stitched together by IT teams, they fall short of providing airtight security. Moreover, the challenge to weave them together increases if these software solution offerings are from different vendors.

This is where CNAPP offers vast benefits as a holistic security solution. CNAPP ensures that security is weaved into application development through DevSecOps, and also provides automated remediations to security issues to ensure immediate mitigation when a risk or an attack is detected.

Meagen Eisenberg, CMO of Lacework, said:

"Cloud-native applications need security built cohesively into every stage of their lifecycle, from code to cloud—that’s what CNAPP is designed to deliver. However, not all platforms are built the same. The most effective CNAPP brings a unified user experience across clouds, with continuous security applied from the moment code is written through to when it’s running in production.”

The right CNAPP software provides comprehensive risk coverage. But how would you select them? 

CNAPP consolidates all security capabilities necessary to secure cloud-native applications. Every organization has different cloud setups and unique security requirements. With so many security solutions and vendors, it can be a daunting task to zero in on the right software for the company. 

Omer Danon Azaria, vice president of engineering at Sysdig, advises companies to evaluate CNAPP vendors for the following capabilities: 

• Ability to address a broad set of security use cases from source to production: This includes capabilities such as Infrastructure as a Code (IaC) security, vulnerability management, configuration and access management, threat detection and response across cloud workloads, users and services (cloud detection and response), and compliance.
• Accurate prioritization of critical vulnerabilities: Prioritizing the most critical vulnerabilities, configuration, or access mistakes based on in-use risk exposure is vital. The ability to provide remediation guidance that ultimately helps teams make informed decisions directly where it matters most—at the source.
• Maximum coverage and deep visibility: Evaluating whether CNAPP vendors provide deep visibility and insights across the entire multi-cloud footprint, including IaaS and PaaS, extending across VM, container, and serverless workloads is necessary.
• A truly holistic solution: Some vendors acquire multiple companies to check the box, resulting in a poor, disjointed experience. It is helpful to look for a CNAPP vendor that tightly integrates the source to production use cases, replacing multiple-point products with a comprehensive picture of risk across configurations, assets, user permissions, and workloads.
• Tight integration with the DevOps and security ecosystem: The CNAPP tool must integrate with CI/CD tools and scan for misconfigurations and vulnerabilities pre-deployment and with SIEM software to trigger alerts or forward events so teams can act immediately.
• Customizations that match the organization’s needs: The ability to customize policies, filter results, and accept risk based on the organization’s unique environment is key to successfully adopting a solution.

CNAPP will rise to prominence for its comprehensive protection and insights

CNAPP consolidates security efforts across the entire application lifecycle. It saves the time and effort of managing multiple applications and integrating them. The best part, though, is that it has eyes on all sections of application development (continuous integration, continuous delivery, CI/CD), deployment, data flowing across different parts, and the infrastructure being used. It can absorb all this information to provide powerful insights to cover any and all security gaps in cloud applications. 

As companies look for exhaustive, but easy-to-manage security solutions for their cloud environments, CNAPP adoption is set to increase in the next few years.

Edited by Jigmee Bhutia