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


A Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) isn't about adding another security weapon to your armory; it is about replacing several security tools with a single converged solution. A CNAPP is a compelling alternative for using multiple tools to simplify cloud security, such as Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP), Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM), Container Scanning, and Cloud Identity and Entitlement Management (CIEM) solutions.

What are the Tasks of CNAPP?

A competent CNAPP performs the following tasks −

  • Inspects your AWS, Azure, or GCP estate for misconfigurations and compliance issues (as performed by CSPM tools)

  • In Kubernetes, it detects misconfiguration and compliance issues (as performed by KSPM tools)

  • Vulnerabilities, security misconfigurations, insecure secret management, and active compromises in cloud workloads, whether they be virtual machines, containers, or serverless operations, are all detected (as performed by CWPPs). Assesses your cloud environment's rights settings against least privilege and other best practices (as performed by CIEM solutions)

  • Scans containers and images for risks like security vulnerabilities, hardening, unsafe secret management, and more as early as feasible in the application development process.

While it may appear that combining diverse cloud security technologies is a simple task, the revolution of CNAPPs extends well beyond just grouping products together and giving them a catchy name and separate dashboard tabs. In fact, businesses should be wary of offers that are essentially the repackaging of tools into a single SKU with no added value. Instead of only highlighting major security vulnerabilities, CNAPPs intelligently combine data points from multiple tiers in the technology stack to reveal important security issues instead of sending thousands of meaningless disconnected alerts.

What Kind of Issues CNAPP Solves?

Rather than treating development and runtime as distinct challenges— protected and scanned using a range of different tools, enterprises should regard security and compliance as a continuum spanning development and operations, and strive to combine technologies wherever practicable. This is where the CNAPP program comes in.

The purpose of CNAPP is to enable cloud-native environments with comprehensive end-to-end security. Organizations should utilize an integrated platform strategy rather than employing multiple point solutions that only handle certain security challenges and must be manually stitched together. CNAPP is a combined set of security and compliance capabilities designed to help secure and safeguard cloudnative apps throughout development and production.

CNAPP can acquire a holistic perspective of application risk by exchanging context between development and production, allowing it to reliably protect applications throughout their life cycle.

CNAPP is a unified platform that brings together the capabilities of several existing cloud security categories, including "shift left" artifact scanning, Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM), IaC scanning, Cloud Infrastructure Entitlements Management (CIEM), and Runtime Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP).

What Are the Benefits of Having a CNAPP?

Multiple disparate systems will inevitably have visibility gaps and integration challenges. This means that DevSecOps teams will have more work to do and that enterprise workloads will be less observable. Enterprises may address these challenges and enhance their overall security posture by implementing a CNAPP.

Serverless Security

Traditional security solutions developed for "castle-and-moat" networks with well-defined parameters are not appropriate for modern enterprises with cloud-native applications. CNAPP has been created with a snew "cloud-native" infrastructure in mind, including containers and serverless security, by integrating with CICD pipelines and offering protection across public and private clouds as well as on-premises.

Improved Visibility

For cloud-native workloads, there are several security scanning, monitoring, and observability technologies. What sets CNAPP distinct, however, is its ability to contextualize data and provide end-to-end visibility throughout an organization's application architecture.

A CNAPP solution, for example, may prioritize alarms that represent the most danger to a company by providing end-to-end visibility and precise data on settings, technology stacks, and identities.

Tighter Controls

Misconfigurations of secrets, cloud workloads, containers, and Kubernetes (K8s) clusters are the frequent hazards that corporate applications face. Enterprises may use CNAPP systems to scan, detect, and swiftly address security and compliance problems caused by misconfigurations.

Updated on: 14-Apr-2022

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