What is CNAPP?

1. What is CNAPP (cloud-native application protection platform)?

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A cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) is a tool that unifies security and compliance technology to protect cloud-built apps and services. It integrates multiple cloud security technologies to protect cloud-native apps and infrastructure. It also automates security throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from build to runtime.

Cloud security platforms consolidate cloud security tools such as:

• Cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM)
• Cloud workload protection (CWP)
• End-to-end application security
• Identity security
• Kubernetes security posture management (KSPM)
• Data security posture management (DSPM)
• Other cloud security features

CNAPP capabilities:

• Cloud resource discovery
• Comprehensive visibility into all cloud assets, services and infrastructure
• Cloud risk management
• Infrastructure as code (IaC) scanning
• Threat detection
• Container and serverless security
• Continuous monitoring and identification of cloud assets, vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and other cloud exposures
• Threat intelligence for context into risk prioritization
• Enhanced communication and productivity across DevSecOps teams
• Compliance to industry standards like HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR and others
• Decreased manual intervention and more efficient, streamlined workflows
• Decreased risk of cyberattacks
• Decreased costs associated with security and compliance programs
• Enhanced protection of business-critical assets
• Alignment of security and compliance with business objectives
• Supports better understanding of cloud security priorities and increases buy-in from the board and C-suite

You can use it to secure foundational parts of your cloud infrastructure like microservices and containers. Traditionally, cloud security practitioners used disparate, fragmented tools for this, which create visibility and security gaps across your cloud attack surface.

A CNAPP finds security blind spots so you can fix risky vulnerabilities most likely to impact your business.

And, as you shift left to align your security and compliance programs, you’ll get more insight into cloud threats so you can align mitigation plans to bigger-picture goals, like business continuity.

Importance of CNAPP cloud security

CNAPPs play an important role in cloud security. The software aligns security and DevOps. It helps them integrate security into cloud-native app development from concept throughout production.

The platform supports security-first to proactively reduce your cloud attack surface and breach potential.

Origin and evolution of CNAPP (Gartner’s definition)

Gartner coined “cloud-native application protection platform.” According to Gartner, CNAPP meaning is … “a unified and tightly integrated set of security and compliance capabilities, designed to protect cloud-native infrastructure and applications.”

Key features of CNAPP

• Holistic visibility for cloud apps, workloads, containers and infrastructure
• Continuous monitoring for security exposures like vulnerabilities and misconfigurations
• Cloud workload resource identification and security
• Identity management and security
• Real-time insight and automated remediation capabilities for critical cloud security threats

You can use it to monitor and protect:

• Containers
• Virtual machines
• Serverless functions
• Multi-cloud workloads
• Cloud storage
• Cloud networks
• Identity and access management systems
• Application programming interfaces (APIs)

CNAPPs and vulnerability management

Vulnerability management is an important CNAPP feature. If your platform integrates automated vulnerability scanning, you can get continuous insight into cloud app risks to prioritize exposure remediation.

It also helps security teams proactively stay ahead of attackers wanting to exploit insecure cloud resources. The solution enables continuous asset identification and scanning. This is important for dynamic multi-cloud environments. In these settings, apps and services can quickly start, stop or get updates while running.

The platform can also unify security controls in real time with:

• Runtime protection
• Policy enforcement and monitoring
• IaC scanning
• Threat detection and response
• Automated compliance monitoring and reports
• Automated remediation
• Encryption management
• Identity and access management (IaM)
• Least-privilege access enforcement

Another important feature is compliance management across complex — and increasing — industry and regulatory security standards.

With built-in compliance templates, it’s easier to align these controls with security and compliance frameworks. With continuous monitoring and data analytics, you can proactively find compliance gaps and fix them before a security event.

Automated compliance reporting capabilities align security and compliance programs with business goals — and build confidence for your next certification or audit.

2. Why is CNAPP critical for cloud security?

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CNAPPs are critical for cloud security. They enable comprehensive visibility across dynamic and highly-distributed cloud environments.

With real-time vulnerability management capabilities, it keeps pace with rapidly changing, fast-paced cloud environments. Each day, and sometimes many times a day, your teams may change workloads or applications or update existing tools.

A CNAPP can continuously scan for security and compliance gaps so you can close them before an attacker finds them.

Unlike on-prem servers and networks, cloud environments are fluid. That makes effective cloud security challenging. And, many organizations use multiple cloud services providers (CSPs) and operate in public, private and hybrid cloud environments.

Unfortunately, some organizations still use traditional security methods in the cloud, which are ineffective and create risk management gaps.

The platform facilitates effective risk governance by creating single-pane-of-glass visibility into dynamic cloud environments. It can also ensure consistent and compliant implementation and enforcement of cloud security policies across different cloud environment types.

With the ability to automate many otherwise time-consuming cloud security tasks, a CNAPP increases efficiency. It optimizes workflows and reduces cloud development and security costs.

Another reason it’s critical for cloud security is because it eliminates manual interventions by automating identity and access permissions. This is important in cloud environments with many APIs and microservices. These services facilitate flexibility and scalability, but introduce more risk.

IaM capabilities ensure the right people have the correct amount of permissions to perform their jobs. It protects critical assets and prevents unauthorized lateral movement across your networks.

With least-privilege access and activity monitoring, you can spot anomalies and quickly address identity exposure. This also reduces the risk of cloud attacks that use privilege escalation.

Finally, CNAPPs integrate security into DevOps pipelines. Traditionally, security was an afterthought in cloud-native application development. It often slowed down development cycles.

The software enables “shift-left” security, which builds controls into the earliest stages of app development. A CNAPP is fundamental for exposing and closing vulnerabilities before application deployment. It reduces attack vectors threat actors could exploit post-deployment.

By embedding security into development, CNAPPs support rapid cloud adoption and innovation, without compromising security.

Top 6 challenges in securing cloud-native applications

Because cloud-native app environments constantly evolve, the threat landscape rapidly changes with it. This makes it difficult to discover new and existing issues across resources like cloud apps, especially when it’s not part of your cloud security strategy.

Common challenges securing cloud-native environments:

1. Lack of visibility across dynamic cloud workloads

Some security teams still use traditional on-prem vulnerability management processes for the cloud. Unfortunately, what once worked for on-site servers and networks doesn’t work here.

With a dynamic cloud, your business can scale and flex as your needs change. However, that introduces new cloud exposures. Most traditional on-prem security tools only protect networks at the perimeter.

When security professionals try to shoe-horn these controls into the cloud, it doesn’t work. Unlike on-site assets, the cloud doesn’t have clear and distinct perimeters. It’s constantly changing, with new assets and services spinning up and down. Static access controls aren’t effective.

2. Managing security in multi-cloud environments

Many organizations use security tools without comprehensive visibility into complex environments, like a combination of public, private and hybrid cloud environments.

Each CSP also has a unique shared cloud security responsibility model. They’re different from one CSP to another and different for different customers. What you’re responsible for protecting in one cloud environment may be different from the next, especially for compliance.

Another challenge multi-cloud environments create is you can’t use static policies and make them applicable across all environments. No one-size-fits-all policy works for all risk types in cloud environments.

3. Securing APIs and microservices

Securing APIs and microservices in the cloud is challenging. You have a vast amount of connections and communication points across services. This requires comprehensive and complex authentication controls.

And, it’s not just the volume of connections that make this difficult. AP gateways and microservices create even more challenges when they communicate. Each time a communication begins, it’s a new opportunity for a bad actor to exploit a security weakness.

Another key issue is rapid app development and deployment cycles. When teams provision cloud resources on-demand, it increases the risk of overlooked vulnerabilities or misconfigurations. Cloud security is even harder for teams that don’t build security-first into the SDLC.

4. Vulnerability management in fast-changing deployments

Vulnerability management is challenging in fast-changing cloud deployments, especially where container-based systems constantly shift. This makes it difficult to keep track of assets that quickly come and go in the cloud.

Knowing which assets you have, who uses them and how is critical to vulnerability management. You can’t protect assets and services if you don’t know about them or how people use them.

Likewise, faster release cycles from your DevOps teams mean new cloud apps and services could accidentally introduce new vulnerabilities. When DevOps doesn’t integrate security into the CI/CD pipeline, it makes it harder to automate vulnerability identification and remediation.

Rapidly changing deployments in these complex environments also require risk prioritization and threat intelligence to understand which vulnerabilities to address first.

5. Ensuring least-privilege access and identity security

Ensuring least-privilege access and identity security in the cloud is challenging because the cloud needs granular permissions. You can easily overlook over-provisioned identities.

The cloud’s shared responsibility model exacerbates this. Your security teams must manage identity federation and third-party access, but the CSP is responsible for other controls. These environments make it hard to uncover excessive access permissions. If they’re unchecked, they create security exposures across your cloud attack surface.

6. Maintaining compliance with evolving cloud security regulations

Maintaining compliance with evolving cloud security compliance mandates is challenging because these regulations are complex. They rapidly evolve to keep pace with the cloud threat landscape.

As your organization adds, removes and changes cloud resources, it is hard to keep security controls consistent. These controls must meet regulatory requirements. The faster they change, the more difficult it is to identify exposures and document remediation. Both are essential for compliance.

And, if you’re not continually keeping track of these mandates, it’s easy to fall behind.

Regulatory bodies frequently update frameworks. What’s compliant today, may not be compliant tomorrow. You must constantly adapt your controls to keep pace.

The cloud shared responsibility model creates more challenges here. When you split security with your CSP, you must ensure your third-parties are compliant. That’s difficult when you don’t directly manage outside security policies or procedures.

You can also misunderstand security agreements and think the CSP manages security, when in reality, you have responsibilities, too.

Traditional security solutions vs. CNAPP

Traditional security solutions rely on disparate tools that approach cybersecurity from a fragmented perspective, creating visibility challenges and security gaps.

When these tools operate in silos, they hold important data hostage. This makes it nearly impossible to get the comprehensive visibility you need. This contributes to missed vulnerabilities and slow remediation times, increasing the potential for a breach.

Conversely, a CNAPP integrates and automates all the key security functions you need to protect and defend the cloud. It unifies vulnerability and configuration management, workload protection and compliance monitoring within a single platform. This eliminates blind spots that traditional security methods create.

You also get end-to-end visibility across your cloud environments. Regardless of how complex they are, you don’t need costly, fragmented security tools. Instead, you can automate security processes to rapidly — and confidently — adopt secure cloud systems and services.

You can also use a CNAPP to instantly find new cloud assets as they pop up. It helps continuously monitor workloads and data for consistent security policy enforcement. When you add cloud security to development pipelines early, you support fast and Agile development with less risk.

CNAPP’s role in multi-cloud environments

13 best practices to implement CNAPP in multi-cloud environments

1. Unify visibility across your multi-cloud environments.
   1. Configure it to communicate with all of your cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)).
2. Use a solution with integrated asset identification and management, vulnerability assessment, vulnerability management and workload and configuration monitoring into a single dashboard.
3. Conduct routine audits to ensure your processes don’t miss cloud resources for holistic insight across the cloud.
4. Use automation to manage and enforce security and compliance policies, including rules and templates to automatically apply security configurations to all new deployments.
5. Set up continuous compliance checks for your specific regulatory standards (GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA) to decrease drift and misconfigurations.
6. Integrate CNAPP into your DevOps workflows to embed security throughout the SDLC.
7. Configure it to scan code and containers for vulnerabilities before deployment. Shift left to build security into the development lifecycle.
8. Use a CNAPP for risk assessments.
9. Prioritize vulnerabilities and security issues based on the context of your unique cloud environment (asset criticality, exposure level and exploitation potential).
10. Prioritize vulnerabilities for high-risk, publicly exposed assets or those with sensitive data to make actionable, data-driven decisions to fix the most impactful vulnerabilities first.
11. Continuously scan for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations (overly permissive access controls or insecure settings).
12. Use guided, automated remediation where possible.
13. Regularly review logs, conduct penetration tests and review audit results to identify and close security gaps.

How to address security across the software development lifecycle

Here are 8 ways to use a CNAPP for integrated security across your SDLC:

1. Shift-left. Integrate security as soon as you can in cloud software development.
   1. Embed security into your design and coding phases.
   2. Ensure your teams use secure coding practices, including automated code scans to find exposures during development.
2. Automate security into your continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.
   1. Test security controls at every stage to uncover vulnerabilities and misconfigurations before production.
3. Continuously monitor your codebases, third-party libraries, cloud services and cloud infrastructure for new vulnerabilities throughout the SDLC.
   1. Use a solution that detects vulnerabilities in real-time to proactively address security issues as they happen.
4. Consistently enforce security policies across all development, testing and production environments.
5. Use IaC templates and automation tools to standardize security configurations.
6. Conduct regular audits to ensure your cloud environments meet security and compliance requirements. This can prevent gaps or misconfigurations during the SDLC.
7. Build a culture of collaboration between development, security and operations teams (DevSecOps).
8. Regularly review security practices to verify DevSecOps includes security at every phase. Audit processes to see if teams align to address vulnerabilities before, during and after deployment.

3. How does CNAPP improve cloud-native architecture?

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A CNAPP improves cloud-native architecture using an integrated approach to manage cloud-native environment security.

The platform provides end-to-end cloud security for clear visibility into complex cloud architectures. You can also apply automatic, consistent and policy-driven controls to securely scale as cloud-native workloads evolve.

Integration with cloud-native technologies (Kubernetes, containers, microservices)

Integration into your Kubernetes environment gives you better visibility into Kubernetes workloads. You can find and fix misconfigurations and consistently enforce security controls.

Containers are the foundation of cloud-native architecture. CNAPPs help quickly and most importantly, securely, deploy applications with built-in protections.

A cloud-native application protection platform for container security can:

• Manage security configurations in runtime
• Scan images in registries to detect vulnerabilities before deployment
• Conduct compliance checks, vulnerability assessments, anomaly monitoring and access management
• Decrease cyberattacks

Microservices help your DevOps teams break down complex apps into more manageable services. Here, the platform secures interactions between these services, including detecting and remediating vulnerabilities within each microservice. CNAPPs can monitor network traffic and find potential threats.

Scalability for dynamic and elastic workloads

Cloud architecture is made up of dynamic and elastic workloads, meaning it frequently changes. A CNAPP adapts policy-backed security controls to new resources. It can automatically scale back when you no longer need them.

4. What are the key components of CNAPP?

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The key components of a cloud-native application protection platform include:

To secure cloud environments from misconfigurations, vulnerabilities and access risks:

• CSPM
• CWPP
• IAM
• Compliance monitoring

For end-to-end visibility and threat response:

• IaC scanning
• DSPM
• KSPM
• Cloud detection and response (CDR)

Here’s how each contributes to building a comprehensive CNAPP solution:

Cloud security posture management (CSPM)

Use a CSPM tool to continuously monitor for misconfigurations and security risks. CSPMs automate compliance with industry standards and best practices for holistic visibility into cloud asset security and instantly sending alerts about potential exposures.

Cloud workload protection platform (CWPP)

Use a CWPP to secure workloads across virtual machines (VMs), containers and serverless environments, including vulnerability scanning, malware detection and runtime security.

Identity and access management (IAM) controls

Use IAM to safeguard access controls and permissions for cloud resources. A CNAPP helps identify and mitigate risks for overly permissive or misconfigured roles. You can use it to prevent unauthorized access. Automated IAM policies keep tighter control over sensitive data and systems.

Continuous compliance monitoring

Cloud compliance tools within a CNAPP support ongoing compliance monitoring and policy enforcement. This ensures your resources consistently meet regulatory and security benchmarks, no matter how fast or how frequently they change. You can also automate compliance checks and send real-time alerts about potential violations. This helps maintain compliance for common compliance frameworks like HIPAA, PCI-DSS and GDPR.

Infrastructure-as-code (IAC) scanning

Secure cloud environments with infrastructure as code scanning (like Terraform or CloudFormation) to find misconfigurations and vulnerabilities early in code development. With a proactive approach, your developers can build security into every phase and quickly address security issues before production.

Cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM)

Use a CIEM tool to manage and monitor user entitlements and permissions to reduce excess privilege risk. With a CIEM solution, you can continuously log and monitor access patterns to find over-privileged accounts. Then, automatically implement least-privilege access based on your security policies.

Data security posture management (DSPM)

Use DSPM to expose and close risk for all sensitive cloud data. A DSPM can pinpoint where you create, store and transmit sensitive data and automatically apply proper governance controls.

Kubernetes security posture management (KSPM)

Use KSPM to secure your Kubernetes clusters and find configuration problems, access issues and vulnerabilities across containerized applications.

Cloud detection and response (CDR)

Use CDR (or cloud anomaly and detection response) to get real-time threat detection across cloud resources. A CDR can monitor the cloud for suspicious activities. Use it to send alerts to the appropriate response teams for investigation and response.

Application security posture management (ASPM)

Use ASPM to secure development. An ASPM supports shift-left security to proactively expose vulnerabilities and misconfigurations during development. When you find security issues earlier, you can reduce the risk of new cloud attack vectors after deployment.

Cloud service network security (CSNS)

Use CSNS to monitor and protect network traffic and other cloud connections. A CSNS secures cloud network layers and safeguards connections within and between cloud resources.

JIT just-in-time access

Use Just-in-time (JIT) access to minimize exposure to sensitive cloud environments. JIT grants users or systems temporary, time-bound access to critical resources only when needed. It reduces the risk of unauthorized access and privilege escalation. JIT ensures tightly controlled access and automatically revokes it after a specified time. JIT access and automated workflows can help you more effectively enforce least-privilege principles.

AI security posture management (AI-SPM)

Use AI-SPM to improve visibility, analysis and response capabilities to more effectively secure the cloud. AI-driven insights can expose risks, misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. AI-SPM continuously monitors and analyzes vast amounts of data across complex cloud environments, providing actionable recommendations to mitigate threats to optimize security strategies.

5. How does CNAPP unify security across cloud environments?

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A CNAPP unifies security across cloud environments directly into cloud infrastructure with real-time vulnerability management, compliance monitoring and configuration management.

Cloud-native integrations with CSPs like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform centralize cloud security. You can enforce least-privilege access, vulnerability remediation and other best practices across all environments and workloads — regardless of provider or technology stack.

Centralized security management dashboards

Find a cloud security solution with a centralized security management dashboard to consolidate data from your cloud providers to find exposures in real time, before threat actors do.

By unifying this data into a single source of truth, your security teams get a clearer picture of risk. A CNAPP helps them understand which cloud security issues to address first.

Visibility across multi-cloud and hybrid environments

Managing security across multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments is complex. A CNAPP gives you visibility so you don’t overlook cloud resources, regardless of where or who hosts them. Your teams can track cloud workloads and manage configurations and permissions across AWS, GCP and Azure and hybrid environments.

Consistent policy enforcement across clouds

CNAPPs ensure consistent policy enforcement, like vulnerability management and access controls, across cloud workloads, containers and cloud infrastructure. It simplifies policy management by automating security processes.

6. How does CNAPP prioritize risks in cloud security?

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A CNAPP helps security teams prioritize cloud security risks with real-time threat intelligence, automation and best practices. It also provides threat context for every risk it assesses. It helps your teams look for cloud vulnerabilities, overly excessive permissions and misconfigurations to prioritize actionable risk remediation strategies.

Cloud security automation has an important role here. It helps teams quickly and accurately categorize and rank risks.

Don’t rely on just standard CVSS scores, which rank many threats critical or high. Look for a solution that weighs these factors before setting risk levels:

• Asset type and criticality
• Exposure and exploit potential

A cloud-native security platform can also support cloud risk management. A CNAPP is a valuable resource as a prioritization tool. It gives you clear insight into the cloud, regardless of how complex or vast the environment is.

You can cull data from multiple parts of your cloud infrastructure, cloud apps and other cloud resources to find risks with cloud-specific context. This gives you insight into how each exposure could impact your infrastructure and workloads.

Another way a cloud-native protection platform prioritizes cloud risks is by dynamically adjusting as your cloud changes. For example, each time a new resource spins up or your cloud configurations change.

A CNAPP can continuously work behind the scenes to identify access issues and make adjustments on demand. This ensures continuous re-evaluation of each exposure based on your current cloud state. It can automatically adjust and apply policy-compliant changes to decrease cloud risks.

Finally, you can use it to always monitor cloud risks and automatically remediate them without manual or human intervention. This frees your teams up to focus on higher-priority cloud security tasks. That can be hard if they face manual intervention each time the cloud changes.

Risk prioritization for business-critical apps

If you are new to cloud security or considering a CNAPP, you should understand how it improves business resilience.

A CNAPP can assess your cloud exposures and focus on your most business-critical assets and applications first. This ensures your most valuable and sensitive cloud resources get priority attention.

A CNAPP doesn’t treat every vulnerability the same. It doesn’t operate like traditional on-prem vulnerability management tools. It won’t tell you to address every vulnerability across your enterprise.

The platform finds risks that affect essential cloud services. Then, it automatically ranks your most high-impact issues. It helps your teams laser-focus on protecting the most important part of your cloud infrastructure. It identifies the exposures that could have the greatest impact on your business.

Contextual governance and compliance controls

Compared to traditional IT security, cloud security is relatively new. One of the challenges is keeping pace with rapidly changing and increasingly complex governance and compliance controls.

A CNAPP really shines here. It can integrate and automate these controls and tailor them for your specific cloud environment.

By continuously monitoring the cloud, it keeps pulse on compliance or regulatory issues. This isn’t just for your internal cloud security policies, but for all security and compliance frameworks for which you’re responsible.

With contextual governance controls, your CNAPP can automatically adapt to cloud workload and data requirements as the cloud changes.

The solution can also initiate automated remediation and address exposures right away. Or, it can alert the appropriate response team. When security issues need manual intervention, it can even offer best practice guidance to resolve them to maintain compliance. This is a proactive way to find cloud risks without finding out the hard way — with breach or failing a compliance audit.

Dynamic adaptation to real-time infrastructure changes

The ability to dynamically adapt in real time to infrastructure changes is also a driving component of cloud security.

A CNAPP will continuously re-assess the cloud and automatically make security adjustments as needed. This is key to helping teams scale cloud security practices.

A CNAPP automatically finds new risks when a cloud resource appears. This means you don’t need an employee or outside consultant to manually search for risks. It also applies consistent controls that follow regulatory, industry and internal policies.

7. How does CNAPP integrate security into CI/CD pipelines?

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A CNAPP integrates security into continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery or deployment (CD) (CI/CD) pipelines by automating security checks, compliance validations and vulnerability assessments into every stage of your SDLC.

With real-time monitoring and threat detection in your CI/CD pipeline, each time DevOps starts a new cloud build, it checks code, infrastructure and containers for security issues. It pinpoints misconfigurations or other exposures early in development.

Overview of CNAPP in DevSecOps

When a CNAPP identifies a security issue during development, it can automatically alert developers. This stops them from pushing insecure code into production.

The platform can also adapt with each new update or code change. For example, using IaC scanning, container image scans or enforcing policies.

Traditionally, developers created cloud apps and then security addressed exposures after deployment, which increases your exposure. Threat actors can find those security gaps and exploit them before your teams know they’re there.

Automation and orchestration for early security detection

With automation and orchestration, a CNAPP scans for risks as your teams build and deploy code. This instantly adds appropriate security controls without slowing down developer workflows. These slow-downs have long been barriers to integrating security into the SDLC, but a CNAPP eliminates them.

Securing CI/CD pipelines with continuous security assessments

Continuous security assessments are critical to CNAPP functionality. A CNAPP will conduct security assessments at every lifecycle stage. This ensures security is front-of-mind for every component as it moves through your CI/CD processes. It decreases the chance bad code can slip into production, even if your teams are rapidly pushing out new cloud apps and services.

Cloud-native security platforms for DevOps and CI/CD pipelines

Developers build a CNAPP from the ground up as a cloud-native security solution. Unlike other tools not made for the cloud, it seamlessly integrates with your DevOps and CI/CD environments. It can consistently apply DevSecOps principles across multiple cloud services and complex cloud environments.

It’s the perfect companion for other cloud-native tools like containers and serverless functions.

8. What are the automation and remediation features of CNAPP?

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The core of a CNAPP is its automation and remediation features. They help users streamline complex cloud security processes for dynamic cloud environments.

For example, you can automate continuous scans to look for vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, excess permissions and other cloud exposures. This happens even as new resources quickly move in and out.

With automation, the CNAPP instantly scans each new resource to prioritize remediation, resolve issues or alert others to respond to more complex issues.

Automatic remediation decreases response times and manual intervention for common and known cloud security issues. For example, you could configure it to:

• Automatically apply a patch for specific vulnerabilities
• Remove excessive permissions
• Enforce security rules like encryption on cloud storage buckets

Even for complex issues, a CNAPP’s guided remediation decreases human error and speeds up response.

Automated policy enforcement

A CNAPP can automate policy enforcement. It applies specific security and compliance policies across the cloud, touching each resource and service in real time.

For example, your security policy says you must use private storage resources. The CNAPP can automatically adjust misconfigured settings to remove public access.

Similarly, you can set policies so certain types of resources use specific compliance requirements. For example, it can automatically restrict access to databases based on your network.

Workflow automation for incident response

With a CNAPP, you can automate incident response workflows. Whenever you have a security exposure, it will apply a consistent, policy-driven response. This can happen anywhere, regardless of where the cloud exposure happens.

You can also configure workflows to follow your pre-set incident response playbooks. For example, after detecting an anomaly in the cloud, the solution can send alerts. While your responders prepare to address the problem, the platform can isolate affected cloud resources. Then, it will trigger the next steps for forensic investigation.

Here, a CNAPP is pivotal in reducing incident response times.

The platform can optimize incident response even further. It can dynamically prioritize mitigation or remediation based on each exposure’s severity and context.

For example, it can prioritize fixing a serious asset vulnerability over updating an employee’s laptop. This maximizes resources without compromising security.

Automated compliance and remediation features

A CNAPP’s automated compliance and remediation features support collaboration across multiple departments and teams, including streamlining communications, creating compliant documentation and generating reports.

For compliance and fast, accurate remediation, a CNAPP constantly evaluates cloud controls against industry, legal and other compliance requirements. It can then enforce real-time controls and send alerts or generate reports about unresolved issues.

Automated cloud compliance reports are essential for audits. Beyond that, they reduce manual effort generally required for audit prep. With a CNAPP always running, your teams can work on other issues with greater potential impact on your business.

You can even integrate automated compliance checks into your CI/CD pipeline. This ensures every new app or service that goes into production gets a green light from security.

9. What are the benefits of CNAPP for cloud-native applications?

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Here are some of the key benefits of a CNAPP for cloud–native applications:

1. Comprehensive cloud security
2. Enhanced threat detection and response
3. Simplified cloud security management
4. Reduced cloud security complexity and alert fatigue
5. Automated policy enforcement and cloud compliance checks
6. Proactive cloud misconfiguration identification and mitigation
7. Consistent security policies
8. Improved cloud governance and audit prep
9. Protection against insider threats and privilege misuse
10. Reduced operational overhead with automation and orchestration
11. Integrated security across multi-cloud and hybrid environments
12. Real-time visibility into cloud assets and configurations
13. Risk prioritization based on business impact
14. Improved collaboration between security, DevOps and compliance teams
15. Continuous security assessments in CI/CD pipelines
16. Faster, automated risk remediation
17. Scalability for dynamic, elastic cloud workloads

10. How does CNAPP protect cloud workloads?

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A CNAPP protects cloud workloads in several ways:

• Scans hosts, container images and serverless functions for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations before deployment.
  • Example: Detects insecure settings in an AWS Lambda function; then it launches a security update before deployment.
• Monitors workloads in runtime to find and block suspicious behavior.
  • Example: Flags or halts activities when an app makes unusual API calls.
• Continuously scans all layers of your cloud stack — apps, infrastructure and networks — and provides actionable insights to prioritize fixes.
  • Example: Identifies and patches a critical OS vulnerability on a virtual machine in Google Cloud Platform.
• Ensures consistent and compliant safeguards across all your cloud providers as workloads shift or expand.
  • Example: Enforces the same security policies across AWS and Azure, even as services scale or move between them.
• Automates compliance checks and remediates non-compliant configurations to align workloads with regulatory standards.
  • Example: Automatically enforces encryption on all data storage buckets in Azure to comply with GDPR.
• Optimizes IAM by monitoring and managing permissions to decrease the likelihood of excessive or unused privileges.
  • Example: Flags an IAM role with excessive permissions in AWS and applies a least-privilege configuration.
• Detects and corrects configuration changes that deviate from security baselines.
  • Example: Automatically reconfigures an accidentally-public security group in AWS to private.
• Inspects application traffic for malicious payloads to prevent SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
  • Example: Blocks a suspicious SQL query directed at a cloud-hosted database.
• Adapts security controls on demand as workloads scale up or down.
  • Example: Automatically implements the latest security policies when an auto-scaling group in GCP spins up new instances.
• Enforces encryption on data in transit and at rest.
  • Example: Encrypts data moving between services in a Kubernetes cluster.
• Scans IaC templates, like Terraform or CloudFormation, for security issues to prevent insecure configurations making it to deployment.
  • Example: An IaC configuration contains an open security group in AWS. The CNAPP can flag the issue to stop your teams from letting it get into production.
• Monitors and secures Kubernetes clusters, ensuring best practices for container orchestration, including secure configurations, role-based access and container image scanning.
  • Example: Detects an outdated vulnerable base image in a Kubernetes environment and blocks container deployment.
• Integrates shift-left security into early stages of cloud app development.
  • Example: Scans code in a developer’s local environment to proactively find security exposures.
• Decreases identity exposures like service accounts and API keys.
  • Example: The CNAPP sends an automatic alert to your security team. The alert includes recommendations to rotate a key when it discovers excessive permissions within a Git repository.

11. How does CNAPP help with regulatory compliance?

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A CNAPP helps with regulatory compliance by automatically and continuously running compliance checks against common compliance frameworks like HIPAA and SOC2. You can also create custom internal policies.

If your team still uses manual security checks, you’re increasing the possibility of compliance gaps. This could result in breaches, fines or penalties.

Another important compliance piece is documentation and audit trails. When your teams are busy, they might push off proper documentation or rush through it, creating errors.

A CNAPP with automated compliance documentation and reporting streamlines these processes. It can also give you real-time insight into your compliance posture at any time.

With detailed compliance reports or ready-made reports from a library, you can show auditors your compliance status anytime. If you have gaps, you can also use these reports to support remediation plans and timelines.

Finally, a CNAPP with guided and automated remediation can instantly detect issues as they happen. For example, let’s say your organization must meet all HIPAA data security and privacy requirements. The system can conduct an automatic scan and expose an unencrypted database.

With built-in policy-driven controls, it can automatically fix it by enforcing encryption protocols to meet HIPAA standards.

This decreases the chance of compliance issues and reduces the time your cloud is exposed.

CNAPP security tools for compliance with PCI-DSS and HIPAA, etc.

A cloud-native platform supports real-time compliance auditing by continuously monitoring your cloud infrastructure, assets, configurations and data flows for specific regulatory requirements.

As rapidly as the cloud changes, manual compliance checks are inefficient and increase risk exposure. CNAPP tools can find violations, automate detection and alerts and instantly create risk reports.

CNAPP security tools provide compliance support for SOC2, ISO 27001 and other standards with real-time auditing:

• SOC 2 compliance: Can monitor cloud infrastructure for data security and availability issues like insecure access controls, excessive permissions and unpatched vulnerabilities. If it finds a misconfigured server that’s publicly accessible, it can immediately flag it. From there it can either trigger policy-backed remediation or alert your response team.
• GDPR: GDPR has rigorous data security requirements to protect EU citizens’ information. These rules can apply to businesses within and outside the EU. Use a CNAPP to automatically scan EU customers' data. It can find any protected information you’ve stored in unapproved regions outside the EU. If you have, it can instantly move the data to an approved region to meet GDPR’s data residency requirements.
• PCI DSS: If you’re an e-commerce business, you must protect all your customer payment data. The larger you are, the more customer data you have, the more challenging that is. Here, the solution could find an unprotected API endpoint connected to a cloud-hosted payment processing system. Instead of leaving it open to expose sensitive cardholder data, the CNAPP can automatically restrict IP ranges and mandate secure authentication.
• ISO 27001: These requirements outline information security management system (ISMS) usage, including strict risk management controls. You could use a CNAPP to automatically scan a cloud instance. If the CNAPP discovers a larger group can access sensitive data than it should, the platform can restrict access. Then, it can apply least privilege access controls.

Role-based access control and governance

Role-based access control (RBAC) and governance help a CNAPP maintain secure, compliant cloud environments:

• Uses granular permissions so users and services can only access resources they need to do their jobs. This prevents unauthorized data access and privilege escalations.
• Continuously monitors and logs access in real time, noting who can access which resources from where and when. It can use this data to automatically alert for anomalies.
• Uses predefined RBAC policies to enforce standards based on compliance frameworks and internal policies. Whenever it detects a user has deviated from those standards or policies, it can immediately restrict access.
• Ensures compliant access controls.
• Generates automated compliance reports about governance and access controls, including access history and policy enforcement and can track all access connected to security incidents.

12. How does CNAPP compare to other cloud security solutions?

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A CNAPP is more holistic for cloud security compared to other cloud security solutions.

With integrated cloud workload protection, CSPM and compliance monitoring in a single platform you get complete cloud security visibility. You can’t get this with disparate tools.

CNAPP vs. CSPM

You may wonder, with a CNAPP vs CSPM, what’s the difference in cloud security? That’s an important question.

It provides comprehensive, end-to-end security by including CSPM, CWP and compliance monitoring in a single solution.

CSPM focuses primarily on cloud configuration and posture management to prevent misconfigurations. It also has deeper visibility and automated risk mitigation for the entire cloud-native stack.

A CNAPP has a broader scope than CSPM. The software takes a risk-based approach when it identifies exposures across multiple cloud layers.

CNAPP vs. CWPP

CNAPPs and CWPPs both secure the cloud, but they don’t have the same scope or functions. A CWPP monitors cloud workloads, such as virtual machines, containers and serverless functions for vulnerabilities, cyberthreats and misconfigurations.

With integrated CWP and CSPM capabilities, a CNAPP secures cloud workloads with real-time visibility. You can easily use best practices for exposure management and enforce policies in your cloud-native stack. It more effectively addresses security risks in multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

CNAPP vs. traditional security frameworks

A CNAPP and traditional security frameworks can work together, but use different approaches.

Traditional security frameworks are for on-prem systems and assets like legacy IT environments. They’re not for dynamic cloud environments. They won’t function properly within a complex cloud-native environment. A CNAPP is purposely cloud-native and built for cloud security.

13. Which security tools does CNAPP integrate with?

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CNAPPs integrations with security tools:

• CIEM
• CWPP
• CSPM
• DSPM
• KSPM
• Security information and event management (SIEM) systems
• Security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR)
• Web application scanning (WAS)
• IAM
• Vulnerability scanners
• EDR
• Cloud-native firewalls
• Identity federation tools
• Container security tools
• Intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS)
• Data loss prevention (DLP)
• Cloud access security brokers (CASB)
• Threat intelligence platforms

Building a comprehensive security ecosystem with CNAPP

To build a comprehensive security ecosystem within your CNAPP, consider these 10 best practices:

1. Evaluate your specific cloud security needs.
   1. Include compliance mandates.
   2. Understand your cloud infrastructure complexities.
2. Use cloud-native firewalls to monitor and control incoming and outgoing traffic.
   1. Enforce security policies.
   2. Protect your cloud network perimeter.
   3. Use only trusted sources to access the cloud.
3. Integrate with SIEM and SOAR systems.
   1. Centralize security event monitoring.
   2. Automate incident response.
   3. Orchestrate alerts across the cloud.
4. Implement vulnerability scanning tools that integrate with your CNAPP.
   1. Continuously detect and address vulnerabilities within cloud workloads, applications and containers.
   2. Identify cloud exposures before attackers can exploit them.
5. Use CSPM to monitor and manage cloud configurations.
   1. Follow best practices.
   2. Flag, alert and correct cloud misconfigurations.
6. Integrate IaM tools to enforce access controls.
   1. Ensure users and systems have appropriate permissions.
   2. Ensure identity governance and security across multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
7. Deploy DLP and CASB to stop data leaks.
   1. Monitor user activity.
   2. Protect sensitive data traveling between cloud services and on-prem systems.
8. Integrate CWPP and KSPM to protect workloads and containers in real-time.
   1. Automate monitoring, risk detection and policy-based remediation.
9. Integrate EDR tools to protect endpoints and find and address suspicious user behaviors.
10. Integrate real-time threat intelligence.
    1. Stay informed about emerging threats and vulnerabilities.
    2. Use industry-leading research, like Tenable Research.
    3. Implement proactive security controls.
    4. Use AI and machine learning to maximize intelligence data.

What’s the role of a CNAPP in a SOC?

A CNAPP is an important tool within a security operations center (SOC). It automatically provides security visibility across every cloud environment, conducts cloud risk assessments and instantly detects threats.

How can CNAPPs help MSPs and MSSPs?

Managed security service providers (MSSPs) can use a CNAPP to manage cloud security for all clients in one platform.

It supports continuous, scalable cloud security and compliance services across multiple clients and environments. With real-time insights into cloud risks, it can increase efficiency and improve communication with clients. An MSP can use the CNAPP’s automated remediation guidance to mitigate issues and reduce client cyber and business risks.

14. What are the best practices for deploying CNAPP?

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1. Establish clear security policies and align them with your business objectives.
2. Continuously assess and manage cloud assets and configurations.
3. Determine which cloud assets are most critical for operations.
4. Implement real-time monitoring to detect risks.
5. Integrate your CNAPP with existing IaM tools.
6. Enforce least-privilege access across cloud accounts.
7. Enable automated vulnerability scanning and remediation.
8. Regularly review and optimize security policies to adapt to the changing cloud threat landscape and evolving compliance requirements.
9. Use cloud-native firewalls to control and monitor traffic across your cloud perimeter.
10. Automate incident response through integration with SIEM and SOAR systems.
11. Ensure continuous security and compliance with trusted frameworks.
12. Establish a CSPM strategy and integrate a CSPM tool.
13. Implement security automation for DevSecOps across the CI/CD pipeline.
14. Adopt continuous threat and vulnerability assessment and management practices.
15. Implement least-privilege access controls.
16. Adopt IaC scanning.
17. Deploy container and serverless security.
18. Leverage CIEM to monitor identities and permissions for least-privilege enforcement.
19. Ensure integration with CWPP to protect workloads.
20. Integrate threat intelligence, AI and machine learning to improve predictive analytics. The CNAPP finds risks attackers are more likely to exploit. The platform also uses proactive threat management and precise vulnerability prioritization (based on business impact).

15. Selecting the right CNAPP solution: A CNAPP buyer’s guide

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The best CNAPP solutions for cloud-native security should include:

1. Full-stack visibility for all cloud resources (identities, workloads, data, infrastructure, containers, serverless functions) and all security exposures.
2. Automations to find and prioritize toxic combination remediation.
3. Automated, continuous governance with integration into your DevOps processes.
4. Customizable and automated compliance management and reporting.
5. Detailed remediation guidance to fix cloud exposures to lower your mean time to remediation (MTTR).
6. The ability to flex and scale as your cloud needs change.
7. Integrations with CSPM, CIEM, CWP, KSPM, DSPM, cloud detection and response (CDR), IaC and self-service just-in-time (JIT) access.
8. Advanced threat detection, AI and machine learning capabilities.
9. Integrations with existing security infrastructure and tools.
10. Continuous logging and monitoring.
11. Support for the shared responsibility model, including features to clarify and effectively manage customer and CSP security roles.
12. Robust role-based access controls to enforce least privilege access and manage permissions across all cloud environments.
13. Real-time, contextual analytics and insights to assess risk and prioritize remediation based on business-critical assets.
14. Native multi-cloud compatibility to simplify security management across AWS, Azure, GCP and other providers.
15. Pre-built integrations for SOC workflows, including SIEM and SOAR systems, to streamline security and incident response.

16. What are common use cases for CNAPP?

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Secure DevOp workflows

Integrate security into DevOps pipelines with IaC scanning and automatic security checks within CI/CD stages. Automatically add security controls to every step of cloud-native app development. This ensures secure code delivery and best practice alignment across development.

Safeguard microservices and containers

Get comprehensive visibility into cloud vulnerabilities and enforce policies to ensure real-time containerized workload protection. With integrations into container orchestration systems like Kubernetes, a CNAPP supports security across all cloud-managed environments.

Kubernetes security

Secure workloads in on-prem and cloud-managed Kubernetes clusters. The top CNAPP vendors for securing Kubernetes environments can scan Helm charts, enforce policies and protect workloads. Use it for continuous compliance checks against industry best practices like the CIS Kubernetes benchmark.

Secure multi-cloud and hybrid environments

Automatically discover and inventory cloud resources across multiple cloud providers like AWS, Azure and GCP. Get full visibility into multi-cloud infrastructure and continuously manage security across hybrid environments.

Prioritize risk

How does CNAPP protect cloud infrastructure from vulnerabilities?

A CNAPP protects cloud infrastructure from security exposures. It has comprehensive and contextual insights to help your teams prioritize and close critical risks. It finds vulnerabilities within workloads, containers and infrastructure and supports proactive security gap remediation.

Manage compliance

Simplify compliance management. Integrate security with key regulatory frameworks like GDPR, NIST and PCI DSS. Streamline auditing and reporting for compliance across diverse cloud environments.

Scan IaC and enforce policies

Scan infrastructure as code templates to find security risks before deployment. By integrating IaC scanning into the DevOps pipeline, you can stop misconfigurations from entering production.

Automate threat detection and response

Monitor and automate continuous threat detection. Use automated anomaly detection and behavior analytics to quickly pinpoint and respond to suspicious activity. This is important in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Protect data with DLP

Monitor cloud data flows and usage to keep sensitive data secure. When integrated with data loss prevention tools, you can mitigate breach risk.

Continuously monitor and report on compliance

Use continuous compliance monitoring with automated compliance checks and reporting to find issues before attackers or auditors do.

17. Real-world applications of CNAPP (use cases by industry)

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Using a CNAPP in finance

If you are a financial institution, such as an investment bank, you might store important customer data in AWS. AWS is a secure and compliant cloud environment that aligns with financial regulations like:

• PCI-DSS for payment processing
• Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) for financial reporting
• The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA)
• Others

Example: You use Amazon S3 to securely store transaction data. You also use Amazon Redshift for real-time analytics about trading activity.

You can use the CNAPP to continuously monitor this data. It can scan for issues to ensure you’re compliant. For example, you can encrypt sensitive financial data at rest and in transit.

How to choose the best CNAPP platform for financial services security

Look for:

• A solution that can securely manage sensitive financial data and transactions.
• Seamless integrations with your risk management frameworks.
• Real-time risk assessment and prioritization based on asset criticality and exposure.
• Detailed auditing features to support SOC audits and financial reporting requirements.

Using a CNAPP in healthcare

HIPAA says healthcare-covered entities and business associates must protect the privacy and security of patient health data, including its availability, confidentiality and integrity.

Example: Your hospital staff uses mobile devices. They access electronic protected health information (ePHI) while on rounds or working remotely. These devices are vulnerable to theft, loss or usage over unsecured networks.

Here, you can use a CNAPP to continuously scan cloud-native health apps for excessive ePHI access permissions. For example, an employee can access sensitive patient records not needed for their job role. It can automatically limit access to only relevant data.

Also, if you integrate cloud security with mobile device management (MDM) systems, you can automatically enforce secure access protocols. You can more quickly detect anomalies like unauthorized access attempts or unusual behaviors. It can automatically isolate compromised accounts and minimize breach risk.

How to choose the best CNAPP platform for healthcare

Look for:

• Device management and mobile security.
• Compliance tools for HIPAA and other medical industry regulations.
• Continuous vulnerability scanning to secure medical devices and cloud-based health platforms.
• DLP tools tailored for healthcare.

Using a CNAPP for government

Government agencies and contractors that handle sensitive data need to protect it. This includes classified information, controlled unclassified information (CUI) and federal contract information (FCI). This is important to protect national security.

Your cloud platforms should be compliant for public sector security standards like FISMA, NIST and FedRAMP.

Example: You’re a Department of Defense (DoD) contractor specializing in defense and intelligence services. You manage classified information within a FedRamp-compliant cloud environment.

To comply with the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), use a CNAPP to continuously monitor for access or policy violations. Automate CMMC compliance checks with a CNAPP. It can ensure your infrastructure meets the required CMMC maturity level. You can also use it to decrease time-consuming work of manually preparing for DoD audits.

How to choose the best CNAPP platform for government data

Look for:

• Ability to comply with government security standards such as NIST and FedRAMP.
• End-to-end visibility into all cloud assets.
• Secure access and identity management capabilities for sensitive government systems.
• Continuous monitoring and reporting to comply with public sector auditing requirements.

Using a CNAPP for the energy sector

Energy companies, like those in oil and gas, can use CNAPP solutions to secure cloud connections with industrial control systems (ICS) and operational technology (OT). This helps meet industry standards like NERC Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP).

Example: You’re an energy provider that manages critical infrastructure like SCADA and ICS systems in the cloud. If you’re subject to NERC CIP requirements, you must secure all sensitive data. It requires you to monitor your systems for potential risks to avoid regulatory penalties.

How to choose the best CNAPP platform for the energy sector

Look for:

• Secure cloud and integrated IT and OT environments for end-to-end protection.
• Industrial control system monitoring with real-time security updates.
• Compliance with NERC CIP standards and other energy sector regulations.
• Protection tools to detect and address vulnerabilities in legacy systems and remote assets often used in energy environments.

Using a CNAPP in education

As an educational institution, you must protect student and faculty data. You must also meet a range of security requirements like:

• Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
• Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)
• Others

Example: You’re a university that creates, stores and transmits student, faculty and research data. After recording grades, a faculty member leaves a student’s grade publicly visible in the cloud.

Use a CNAPP to immediately detect the issue and automatically apply policy-driven configurations to limit data access. If the security incident requires more attention, it can alert administrators. It can even guide responders with best practices for proper access restrictions.

How to choose the best CNAPP platform for education

Look for:

• Automated compliance checks specifically for FERPA and COPPA to ensure you’re handling student and child data according to regulations.
• Secure access controls for faculty, staff and students to limit data exposure to only authorized users.
• Secure cloud storage and cloud-native learning applications to protect academic and research data.
• Simple integrations with existing student information systems (SIS), learning management systems (LMS) and research data management platforms.

18. Which challenges does a CNAPP address?

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• Cloud environments often consist of multiple services, platforms and security tools, making effective integration a challenge.
  • A CNAPP consolidates security controls into a single dashboard. You can use existing tools and have a single source of truth for visibility.
• Cloud-native application environments are dynamic and decentralized, including microservices, containers and serverless functions, which complicates security management.
  • A CNAPP enables comprehensive coverage across cloud-native architectures with continuous misconfigurations and vulnerability scanning and automatically adjusts policies as your cloud evolves.
• Maintaining compliance with regulations like GDPR, PCI DSS or SOX in multi-cloud environments is challenging. Continuous infrastructure changes makes this even more challenging.
  • CNAPPs automate compliance checks, generate real-time reports and enforce regulatory best practices.
• Managing security across multiple cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP) is difficult. You need a clear view of all assets, criticality and configurations.
  • A CNAPP automatically discovers and inventories cloud resources to decrease some of these complexities. It gives you holistic visibility so you can monitor and manage risks across all cloud platforms.
• Configuration mistakes, such as improper access controls or excessive privileges, are common and create significant exposures.
  • CNAPPs continuously scan cloud environments for misconfigurations and automate remediation or send alerts to ensure you’re consistently implementing your security policies.
• As cloud environments scale, it’s difficult to maintain consistent security controls.
  • A CNAPP flexes and scales by automating vulnerability management, policy enforcement and compliance checks. It decreases the workload for your existing teams and resources by eliminating manual and time-consuming processes.
• With the increasing complexity of managing user and service identities, access controls are a significant challenge.
  • CNAPPs enable granular identity and access management, monitoring permissions and ensuring least privilege access across users, roles and services.
• Cloud-native applications often rely on third-party software and libraries, which introduce supply chain risks.
  • CNAPPs assess and secure containerized applications to detect vulnerabilities in third-party apps and services. This gives you more visibility into supply chain risks for proactive risk management.
• Containers, commonly used in cloud-native applications, present unique security challenges and are difficult to secure images and runtime environments.
  • CNAPPs use container scanning and runtime protection to proactively find vulnerabilities early in the development process and continuously monitor them during and after deployment.
• Cloud environments are dynamic, which makes identifying threats in real time hard.
  • CNAPPs use continuous monitoring and anomaly detection to find potential security incidents quickly. They can instantly respond to evolving threats before they cause harm.

Cloud shared responsibility model

Another challenge a CNAPP can help you overcome are complexities of managing a cloud shared responsibility model.

Some organizations misunderstand the shared responsibility model in cloud security. They can view it as an equal split between CSPs and customers. However, it actually places many security responsibilities on your organization.

While providers like AWS manage cloud infrastructure to secure the cloud, you must secure everything you deploy within it. You’re responsible for security in the cloud for resources like apps, data and services.

A CNAPP addresses shared responsibility model challenges by unifying controls that monitor and manage the CSP’s and your security requirements.

19. How do I choose the right CNAPP provider?

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Here are some tips to choose the best CNAPP provider for your organization:

• Look for a CNAPP vendor that supports multi-cloud environments and can flex and scale as your cloud infrastructure changes.
  • Tenable solutions scale to protect everything from small environments to large, complex infrastructures.
• Choose a vendor with a full range of security capabilities. Look for real-time threat detection, IaC scanning, vulnerability management, identity and exposure management and continuous compliance monitoring and reporting.
  • Tenable’s CNAPP includes these capabilities and more, for a holistic view of cloud security maturity.
• Ensure the solution integrates with your existing security infrastructure, such as SIEM tools, DevOps pipelines and vulnerability management systems.
  • Tenable Cloud Security easily integrates with many security tools within your existing security stack without disrupting workflows.
• Look for a vendor with an easily deployable and manageable platform. It should have a user-friendly interface that doesn’t have a steep learning curve.
  • Tenable’s CNAPP simplifies complex cloud security workflows. It helps your teams focus on remediation instead of wasting time on manual configurations and routine maintenance.
• Consider a platform that automates governance and supports your unique compliance needs. Look for pre-built templates and libraries and guided remediation.
  • Tenable simplifies compliance with instant checks for common regulations and provides detailed reports.
• Choose a vendor whose product supports customized policies, rules and workflows that align with your security requirements.
  • Tenable products are highly configurable. You can tailor them to meet specific security and compliance mandates.
• Select a vendor with research-backed actionable insights into vulnerabilities, threats and risks.
  • Tenable solutions integrate Tenable Research and other intelligence tools. It uses AI and machine learning to pinpoint your most critical security issues.
• Look for a vendor with a strong reputation and reliable customer support.
  • Tenable is recognized as a leader in vulnerability management. It has strong customer support to help secure your modern attack surface, including the cloud.
• When selecting a vendor, consider the total cost of ownership, including licensing, training and integration fees.
  • Tenable has competitive pricing for organizations of all sizes and provides value by consolidating multiple security capabilities into one platform.
• Ensure the vendor specializes in securing cloud-native applications and services.
  • Tenable can secure complex cloud environments. It has a deep understanding of cloud-native security requirements like Kubernetes, containers and serverless computing.
• Evaluate the vendor’s commitment to innovation and how well their product roadmap aligns with your future needs.
  • Tenable continuously enhances its CNAPP with continuous content refreshing. This integrates new features and support for emerging technologies so you stay ahead of evolving security challenges.

Why is continuous content refresh important for CNAPP pages?

Continuous content refresh is for routine information updates, security policies, threat intelligence, compliance guidelines and product features.

It aligns CNAPP pages with the dynamic cloud security landscape, emerging threats and compliance requirements.

This keeps CNAPP resources relevant and actionable. It gives you reliable real-time insights, feature updates and security strategies to mature cloud-native security strategies.

Additionally, regularly refreshed content improves user engagement. It actively addresses new challenges and integrates with other solutions as issues develop. This supports more effective cloud security decision-making.

20. What are CNAPP future trends?

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With cloud computing changing so rapidly, you may wonder, what is the future of CNAPP?

First, here are some current CNAPP developments:

• Advanced integrations of DevSecOps workflows with seamless connections between development and security teams.
  • Continuous, real-time security monitoring, vulnerability scanning and policy enforcement within CI/CD pipelines reduces the time to detect and resolve cloud exposures.
  • Less manual intervention, improving efficiency and effectiveness.
• Improved integrations with cloud-native security tools such as AWS Config, Azure Security Center and GCP Security Command Center.
• Real-time compliance monitoring and reporting, including SOC 2, PCI-DSS, HIPAA and other standards.
• Enhanced risk prioritization based on asset context with greater visibility into the risk associated with each asset.
  • Ability to prioritize vulnerability remediation based on asset criticality and exposure.
  • More risk insight with context to allocate resources more effectively for urgent threats.
• Advanced threat detection using AI, machine learning and behavioral analytics.
• Streamlined cloud infrastructure management with automatic cloud asset discovery and inventories.

Future CNAPP trends to watch

• More enhanced and seamless visibility and security across AWS, Azure, GCP and other cloud platforms. A more unified exposure view.
  • Greater ability to track and manage cloud assets across platforms. More built-in intelligence to detect anomalies and enforce security best practices.
  • More cloud-native integrations to simplify security ops while maintaining visibility into cloud resources.
• More capabilities to address complex multi-cloud security.
  • More integrations with cloud-native services to enhance contextual security tailored to each cloud provider’s unique features.
  • Vendors will build dynamic, automated security protocols that adapt to multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
• More effective multi-cloud management.
  • More abilities to coordinate and enforce security policies across cloud providers so security teams can mitigate vulnerabilities without manual intervention.
• More automations to address security across the shared responsibility model.
  • Optimized, automated compliance checks that evolve with changing regulations in real time. Will better meet regulatory and organizational requirements as well as cloud provider guidelines while addressing responsibilities within the shared security model.
  • More automated and continuous security policy enforcement to mature cloud security and continuously minimize risks.
• More AI and machine learning for cloud security tools.
  • Increased use of AI and machine learning will automatically find vulnerabilities at scale, detecting previously unnoticed security issues.
  • AI and machine learning will predict vulnerabilities based on historical data, business impact, asset value and exposure risk. Will improve vulnerability and risk assessment accuracy and speed to reduce costs and decrease workloads.
  • CNAPPs will automatically analyze larger datasets and uncover patterns to inform risk assessments and decision-making.
  • These tools will have more granular, actionable insights for more proactive and precise security management.
  • They will automate risk assessments into security operations for comprehensive, proactive and tailored security measures.

The future of CNAPP in zero-trust architectures

• Will integrate with more zero-trust frameworks with enhanced, automated policy enforcement. Will ensure only authorized users or devices can access critical cloud resources.
• Will continuously validate access trustworthiness by assessing user identities and device health in real time.
• Will provide real-time visibility into access requests and user activities, dynamically updating zero-trust policies.
• Will use continuous monitoring to prevent excessive privilege escalation to enhance cloud security.
• Will enforce least privilege principles so users get only necessary access based on specific roles or tasks.
• Will use fine-grained access control policies for specific roles or applications to enhance security without hindering productivity.
• Will enable customizable access profiles so security teams can define dynamic access conditions based on real-time threat intelligence.

Future evolutions for cloud-native security

• Full automation of cloud security operations, from continuous vulnerability scanning to automatic policy application for risk remediation.
• Will be more agile and responsive to new cloud services, features and configurations.
• Real-time security adjustments will enable cloud security teams to react immediately to changes in cloud-native environments.
• Will increasingly automate and integrate cloud-native app security. Will break down more silos and increasingly optimize workflows between app developers and security teams.
• Will leverage more contextual intelligence to automatically adjust security for each component within the cloud-native stack.

Emerging technologies that will shape CNAPP

• Technologies will incorporate shift-left security earlier into the development pipeline, allowing CNAPPs to identify vulnerabilities during development before code reaches production.
• As multi-cloud environments grow, cloud exposure management will become more sophisticated. These tools will automatically shrink the attack surface by identifying exposures across all cloud platforms.
• Advanced multi-cloud threat intelligence will enhance security teams’ abilities to detect vulnerabilities that may impact their infrastructure.
• More consolidation of cloud security tools will provide more comprehensive protection across diverse cloud services.
• CNAPPs will have more integrated DSPM capabilities This will support faster and more precise discovery, classification and asset monitoring.
• Will provide advanced insights into data security risks, automate identification, alerts and sensitive data protection across cloud environments.
• Will provide deeper insights into compliance and risk management to better inform data protection strategies.

Future advancements in AI and machine learning for threat detection

• AI and machine learning algorithms will analyze vast amounts of data. They will more proactively identify anomalous behaviors and threats within the cloud. This will support more accurate and efficient risk assessments.
• With AI-powered detection, CNAPPs will automatically identify security breaches for faster mitigation to reduce breach response times.
• AI-driven automated incident response will prevent major incidents from escalating to quickly contain and remediate threats.
• AI and machine learning will detect vulnerabilities faster and with more accuracy to improve overall cloud resilience.
• CNAPPs will become the centralized platform for managing comprehensive security across all cloud resources. They will integrate more threat intelligence, vulnerability management and compliance enforcement capabilities into a single solution.

21. CNAPP frequently asked questions (FAQ)

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What are the differences between CNAPP, CSPM and CWPP?

The main difference between CNAPP, CSPM, and CWPP is that CNAPP combines CSPM and CWPP features.

A CNAPP provides comprehensive security across the entire cloud-native stack, including applications, workloads and infrastructure.

• CSPM focuses on securing cloud infrastructure, workloads and applications.
• CWPP protects cloud workloads, including virtual machines and containers.

How does CNAPP improve cloud-native security?

A CNAPP improves cloud security by automating vulnerability management and guided remediation across complex cloud environments.

It continuously scans the cloud to find and assess risks and misconfigurations and enforce security and compliance policies. It’s an integrated cloud security tool. It addresses cloud exposures before they negatively impact operations or lead to a breach.

How does a CNAPP work?

A CNAPP works by integrating best practice security controls, policies and processes across the cloud. It also works in hybrid cloud environments that also use on-prem and OT assets. It combines critical security tools into a single platform, including IaC scanning, container scanning, CWP, CIEM, CSPM and CDR.

It operates from a single access point and continuously monitors connections between identities, configurations and resources to detect vulnerabilities and enforce controls and policies. With multi-cloud compatibility, the platform enables scalable risk detection and remediation in dynamic cloud environments.

What industries benefit the most from CNAPP?

All industries can benefit from a CNAPP, especially healthcare, e-commerce and finance. These industries heavily rely on cloud infrastructure and cloud-native apps. They also have stringent and evolving compliance requirements.

With increased regulatory demands, these industries may benefit the most. However, it can also support any industry with dynamic cloud infrastructure like technology or telecommunications.

Can you use a CNAPP in hybrid cloud environments?

Yes. You can use a CNAPP in hybrid cloud environments. It creates a unified security foundation across your cloud attack surface.

The CNAPP enforces consistent security policies, regardless of environment, increases visibility and improves exposure management. It enhances cloud security for all environments, public, private and hybrid.

What are the benefits of integrating CNAPP with CI/CD tools?

• Enables DevOps to embed security early in the development lifecycle
• Provides continuous security assessments and vulnerability scanning throughout the pipeline
• Identifies and addresses security risks before deployment
• Reduces the chance of introducing vulnerabilities into production
• Automates compliance checks
• Streamlines security operations in fast-paced cloud-native app development