What is Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP)?
A Cloud Application Protection Platform, or CNAPP, is a software product that brings together multiple cloud security tools into a single package, thus offering a comprehensive approach to securing an organization's cloud infrastructure, its cloud-native applications, and its cloud workloads.
This platform combines many security functions that – before the arrival of CNAPP – were implemented fragmentarily across individual software products.
The various components of CNAPP provide a range of security capabilities, from monitoring, detecting and responding to vulnerabilities and threats to analyzing, automating, enabling and improving an organization's security policies and procedures.
CNAPP also supports IT and security working together as DevSecOps teams to integrate security into the early stages of application development – ​​a move known as shift left. This approach stems from the belief that shifting security considerations, as well as testing, quality and performance assessments, to the early stages of the software development cycle creates a more secure and less expensive product.
The biggest benefit of CNAPP, according to technology and software market analysts, is that it provides these multiple capabilities in an integrated manner.
For this reason, CNAPP can be used in place of many other cloud security software products. Analysts say this reduces security complexity, while still providing critical functions and services that security teams need to defend their organizations' cloud environment and the software that runs in it.
The demand for unified cloud security tools is high. Gartner estimates in its 2023 Cloud Native Application Protection Platforms Market Guide report that 60% of organizations will have a unified cloud workload protection (CWPP) and cloud security posture management (CSPM) platform for a single vendor, up from 25% in Year 2022.
Meanwhile, the 2023 Cloud Native Application Protection Platform Survey Report, commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), found that 75% of organizations are using CNAPPs or plan to do so.
Why you should use CNAPP
The CSA report findings show that many organizations are having difficulty securing their cloud environments. Specifically, the report noted the following:
32% of organizations have trouble prioritizing security improvements due to the overwhelming and incorrect information they receive from alerts. Only 35% have integrated security into their DevOps practices – although 51% of organizations are in the process of doing so. 22% also cited staff shortages as a major challenge.
CNAPP is certainly no silver bullet — and no security tool is — but analysts believe CNAPP can bring many benefits. First, it can reduce the complexity and volume of work security teams face by giving them one tool, rather than several, to handle a range of security requirements. Second, simplifying security tools can save time and money, which security teams can reinvest to address other security needs.
Analysts also say CNAPP provides security program simplification without sacrificing capabilities. CNAPP provides a range of capabilities, including automating entitlements management, risk detection, and compliance. It also identifies misconfigurations, threats, and errors in the code while the software is in the continuous integration phase/continuous delivery pipeline phase.
Additionally, because it integrates security features and functionality provided by multiple software products, CNAPP provides the security team with a single view, or pane of glass, of security risks and requirements across an organization's cloud environment – ​​including IaaS, PaaS, and serverless workloads. This single view reduces blind spots that arise when security teams use different tools. Furthermore, increased visibility can help quickly detect and respond to security issues.
Combined, CNAPP can help security teams strengthen their overall security posture.
CIEM provides core entitlement capabilities to CNAPP.
CNAPP components and capabilities
Although functionality and features vary from vendor to vendor, CNAPPs typically combine components that provide a set of capabilities, such as the following:
CSPM, which is used to identify misconfigurations and compliance risks in the cloud and which monitors cloud infrastructure for vulnerabilities in security policy enforcement. CSPMs also provide automated threat detection and remediation across diverse cloud resources, including an organization's IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS systems. CSPMs also automate the implementation of an organization's security policies and compliance frameworks. CWPP, which supports multi-cloud security and supports a cloud environment containing public, private and hybrid cloud platforms. CWPPs discover an organization's workloads and scan them for security issues. They also provide additional functionality, such as run-time protection and network segmentation. Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) software, which supports and automates enterprise entitlement management software. CIEM identifies and reports which users have permission to access which parts of an organization's cloud infrastructure. CIEM ensures that users, whether humans or machines, only have access to the cloud infrastructure they need to perform their tasks – an approach known as the principle of least privilege. As such, CIEM is a component of an organization's Identity and Access Management (IAM) program and enables a zero-trust security approach. Cloud service network security is provided via web application firewalls, web application and API protection, distributed denial of service protection, load balancing and transport layer security inspection, among other capabilities. All of these help detect and defend against threats in the dynamic network environment found in enterprise cloud environments. Additional capabilities that can come from CNAPP include segmentation, infrastructure-as-code scanning, AI-powered automation for applying and enforcing rules, and security posture management in Kubernetes.
CNAPP Alternatives for Cloud Security
Security analysts and researchers as well as enterprise security leaders and consultants generally agree on the need for a comprehensive, integrated approach to security, both for on-premises IT and cloud resources. They also call for applying automation and intelligence as much as possible to reduce human errors and errors as well as to increase compliance, speed and responsiveness. Many promote the use of CNAPP instead of using various security tools.
However, organizations should be aware of the potential challenges of implementing CNAPP. CNAPP products offer different capabilities, and some have strengths that others do not. The CNAPP market is still in its maturity stage.
Some organizations may decide that their existing cloud security tools provide adequate protection or that they do not have an environment large enough or complex enough to justify switching from their existing cloud security products to a new platform. However, many security experts point to CNAPP as the strongest option for defending and protecting enterprise cloud environments.
Mary K. Pratt is an award-winning freelance journalist who focuses on covering enterprise IT and cybersecurity management.
