What is Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) in Cybersecurity?


There are a number of vendor classifications in the security services sector nowadays. You may be familiar with some of them, but others may leave you wondering what they are and how they may help you meet your security and compliance goals. In this article, we'll discuss Cloud Workload Protection Platforms, or CWPPs, including what they are, where they fit into the security services landscape, and what value they may provide to your company.

Workload-centric security protection systems, which are often agent-based, define CWPPs. They cater to the particular needs of server workload protection in current hybrid data center designs that include on-premises, physical, and virtual machines (VMs), as well as numerous public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) environments. They should ideally support container-based application architectures as well.

CWPPs have the following capabilities −

  • Configuration of the workload and vulnerability management

  • Traffic visibility, network segmentation, and firewalling

  • Workload behavior monitoring, also known as host-based intrusion detection system, is essentially endpoint detection and response (EDR) for servers (HIDS)

  • Scanning for malware

  • Monitoring, authentication, and assessment of system integrity

  • Controlling the application

  • Controlling the application

What is the Significance of CWPP?

It is not easy to switch from old to cloud-native apps. An application that is currently on-premise cannot be "copied and pasted" to the cloud.

  • Majority of the businesses have legacy programs and infrastructure that restrict them from moving all of their functions to the cloud.

  • Most businesses purposefully use various cloud suppliers, depending on their individual requirements. As a result, most businesses operate in a hybrid, multi-cloud environment, either by necessity or design. In a fragmented environment, this makes it difficult for security experts to know, observe, and manage where applications and data are located.

  • Today, application developers download code from a number of sources, such as GitHub, use workloads to build an app, and then publish it straight to their intended group of users. This method is known as Development Operations (DevOps), and it is a cycle of "continuous innovation and continuous development" (CI/CD) in which they may swiftly respond to clients and enhance their response and experience in weeks or days.

  • Security is no longer a stringent barrier for application production due to the tradeoff of procedure for speed and the ongoing enhancement of apps. Security experts are no longer able to install controls at runtime as they formerly could.

CWPP is an important security solution in the contemporary organization because of the danger to data and applications posed by fluctuating workloads, a lack of visibility and control, and the emergence of the "always on" DevOps environment.

You should be able to find workloads that have been installed in your onpremise and public cloud settings with a complete Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) solution. If you find any unmanaged workloads, you should be able to add the ability to manage them.

From a security standpoint, you should be able to analyze the workload's risk by comparing it to a suitable set of regulations. You should be able to use security features like integrity protection, immutability or whitelisting, memory protection, and host-based intrusion prevention depending on the results of the vulnerability assessment.

Anti-malware defense is less important from a pure security standpoint. Anti-malware may be inextricably linked to the standards that govern your company, but this isn't always the case.

CSPM with CWPP

Since workload safeguards are not always introduced at runtime as a natural and preferably undetectable element of application development, you may boost security's ubiquity and efficacy by moving it to the left of the application process. CSPM Solutions can help you.

Cloud Security Posture Management should be closely connected with CWPP, if not part of the same solution (CSPM). CWPP evaluates workloads and offers ways to secure them, whereas CSPM is supposed to do the same for the cloud accounts where those workloads are placed. Because the two solutions go along so well, they should be part of the same user experience.

Connect the CWPP Solution to the Infrastructure

The CWPP solution should work in tandem with the rest of your security system. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) protects the data that programs utilize and save, whereas CWPP protects the workloads that run applications. A Security Operations Center (SOC) can considerably broaden its picture of sophisticated assaults if it can detect ones that start in or extend into the cloud, from a new perspective. Investigators will be somewhat blind to certain sorts of assaults until the SOC can detect and fix cloud-native threats and vulnerabilities.

CWPP is a platform that addresses the special characteristics of Zero Trust security for cloud workloads, such as −

  • Server, VM, container, and serverless workloads; on-premise or in the cloud if it is persistent or non-persistent.

  • Constraints on security: During the development phase or during runtime.

  • Migration from on-premises to the cloud in hybrid environments.

  • Multi-cloud settings are those in which an organization uses more than one cloud service provider.

  • Finding and managing workloads in a hybrid, multi-cloud environment requires visibility and discoverability.

  • As a result, a complete CWPP solution aids in the creation of cloudnative applications and unlocks the "power of the cloud."

Benefits of CWPP in Cybersecurity

Following are the major benefits of implementing CWPP −

  • Cost − Cheaper initial expenses, lower hardware costs, lower maintenance and operating costs

  • Flexibility − Increase or decrease application capacity based on demand.

  • Improved Client Service − Respond to customer demands more effectively and quickly, resulting in more revenue.

  • Ease of Use − Set up in minutes, use from anywhere, and gather data from apps.

  • Security − Responsibilities are shared, and cloud security is evolving.

Updated on: 14-Apr-2022

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