The cloud security market continues to evolve, reflecting the tireless efforts of security professionals globally. They are at the forefront of developing innovative solutions and strategies to address the evolving tactics of cyber attackers. The need for these solutions to remain at the forefront of potential exploitation methods is clear. One notable development in this ongoing effort is the emergence of the Cloud Native Application Protection Platform, or CNAPP. In Microsoft's guide “From Plan to Deploy: Implementing a Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) Strategy,” we explore all aspects of this emerging trend, what it could mean for your organization, and how to get started.
CNAPP combines several cybersecurity capabilities – Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlements Management (CIEM), and Cloud Workload Protection (CWP), among others – into a single platform. This platform protects your organization throughout every process, from concept development to runtime use. It is specifically designed for native applications in a multi-cloud environment. As a result, you can ensure manageable access and strengthen application defenses against potential vulnerabilities in multi-cloud setups.
Choosing CNAPP as your solution can help chief information security officers (CISOs) build influence. When evaluating the value of CNAPP, consider these numbers:
40% of organizations used a CNAPP in 2023, and an additional 45% expect to use one by the end of 2024.2 87% of organizations are adopting multi-cloud.3 82% of breaches involved data stored in the cloud.4 $4.45 million is the average cost of a data breach 5.54% of organizations do not include security in the development stage.6
Read on for five of the biggest ideas in the guide and download “From Plan to Deployment: Implementing a Cloud Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) Strategy” to dive deeper into this important topic. Use it as a valuable resource to guide your CNAPP planning.
Implementation of the CNAPP strategy
Learn how a cloud-native application protection platform can enhance your organization's security strategy.
Insight #1: AI can tighten security and provide insights
AI and machine learning play key roles in threat mitigation and security operations for cloud security. In fact, it can be considered the backbone of these strategies because it gives you the ability to analyze and respond to threats in real time. Seconds matter in cybersecurity and can make the difference between minimal and major damage caused by a cyber attack.
AI and machine learning can also provide assistance by increasing predictive analysis and automating security tasks, helping your employees prioritize strategic security tasks. It is simply not possible to manually manage today's complex cloud infrastructures. The key is to include human supervision with human monitoring of technologies.
Insight #2: CNAPP can address challenges like alert overload and more
CNAPP provides everyday ease for security teams and strategic value for decision makers. There is an urgent need for a comprehensive cloud security platform, and even better if it is powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. CNAPP helps you address some of the biggest challenges in cloud security, including:
Building security into software during development: Security as code, which involves building security into software during development, will continue to gain momentum. CNAPP benefits the development process in several ways, including ensuring that security is part of application development and establishing collaboration between developers and security teams. Improve your multi-cloud security posture: With CNAPP solutions, you get data aggregation and analysis from multiple cloud platforms and services in a unified dashboard. These centralized insights can help security teams prioritize tasks more easily. Extending multi-cloud visibility and enhancing cross-platform protection are two features of recent Microsoft Security innovations. Reducing costs and addressing advanced cyber threats: The modern digital threat landscape can easily overwhelm SOC analysts and security administrators, and they may become frustrated by the number of signals. CNAPP solutions' predictive analytics can make it easier for them to identify and mitigate potential risks while automating security responses to threats.
Insight #3: Effective cybersecurity needs a good partner
The next wave of multicloud security with Microsoft Defender for Cloud
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Keeping user needs in mind, Microsoft has its own CNAPP solution —Microsoft Defender for Cloud. This comprehensive security solution has powerful security features to protect a wide range of resources, including servers, containers, databases, applications, and most importantly, data storage solutions such as Microsoft Azure Storage, across various cloud platforms. Microsoft Defender for Cloud can protect against today's threats and position your organization against emerging security threats in the cloud with confidence.
Cybersecurity is a dual effort between cloud providers and users. Microsoft Defender for Cloud designs this collaborative approach with a more integrated and proactive strategy than is common in traditional security. Among other features, it is DevOps compliant, features rapid deployment capabilities, and offers two levels of CSPM functionality – basic and premium from an offering called Microsoft Defender Cloud Security Posture Management. Deploying CSPM services should be part of your CNAPP strategy.
It also integrates with other cybersecurity solutions. But given the way Microsoft embraces innovation, it's perhaps not surprising that we'll continue to evolve this solution to keep pace with seamless technological advancement. So, as always, watch this space for upcoming exciting announcements.
Insight #4: CNAPP activation is a multi-pronged approach
With any solution, the benefits cannot be achieved if users do not adopt it. Running Microsoft Defender for Cloud requires integrating it into daily operations and meeting users' needs through continuous evolution of cloud security. You want users to manage it and use the capabilities of the platform. This includes functionality across Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform.
Other factors to activate CNAPP include:
Continuous monitoring, risk assessment and condition assessment. Identity entitlement management. Training employees on using security tools. Establish processes that can mitigate and address unhealthy resources. Promoting a culture of security awareness.
Insight #5: CNAPP is an important part of the modern SOC
SOC is crucial as you strive to be efficient and effective. Insights from CNAPPs like Microsoft Defender for Cloud can dramatically transform SOC operations due to their complete visibility, real-time monitoring, compliance and risk management tools, multiple integrations, and advanced analytics.
You can take a more proactive and strategic approach to cloud security with capabilities like:
Detailed insights into threats and vulnerabilities, including their severity and potential impact. Automated compliance assessments based on industry standards. Support post-incident analysis through incident information.
The SOC is further enhanced with the new Microsoft Defender for the Cloud integration with Microsoft Defender XDR. You can access Defender for Cloud alerts and incidents within the Microsoft Defender portal for richer investigative context.
These highlights are just the beginning of what you can achieve with CNAPP.
Discover the future of CNAPP and cloud security
Building a secure-first organization is critical to confront the constant flow of cyber threats and their increasingly sophisticated nature. The future holds great promise for CNAPP, and Microsoft is leading these efforts with solutions like Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Get details on CNAPP use case scenarios and Defender for Cloud integrations with other Microsoft products — and strategies for adopting and running them — in our guide “From Plan to Deploy: Implementing a Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) Strategy.” Or watch our podcast for expert discussion on how CNAPP can help meet modern challenges. Learn more about how Defender for Cloud can help you protect your multicloud resources, workloads, and applications.
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To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security Blog to keep up with our experts' coverage on security issues. Also follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) to get the latest news and updates about cybersecurity.
1Do you want to build influence as a CISO? Choose CNAPP as your solution, CSO. May 26, 2024.
2The Future of Cloud Security: Top Trends to Watch in 2024, InfoWorld. March 14, 2024.
32023 Cloud Status Report, Flexera.
4Microsoft Enterprise DevOps report.
5. Cost of a Data Breach Report, IBM. 2023.
6. Microsoft cloud security priorities and practices.
