A new category of cloud security tools known as “cnapp” is gaining traction among enterprises and service providers worldwide. This article surveys its meaning, challenges in modern cloud environments, what a CNAPP includes, and why legacy tools often fall short.
Recent research has found that 80% of organisations experienced at least one cloud security incident, with breaches occurring in 83% of organisations within 18 months. As organizations continue migrating to a cloud-native infrastructure, security teams are under pressure to implement systems that provide seamless coverage without operational slowdowns or friction. This article seeks to explain cnapp, its evolution and relation to traditional approaches to cloud security.
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What CNAPP Means for Cloud-Native Applications
The adoption of cnapp is in line with the evolution of security stacks. Cnapps are designed for modern containerised and API driven workloads. They seek to amalgamate as many as five distinct functions, including posture management, workload protection, entitlement governance, and runtime monitoring under one umbrella. While the cloud cnapp is still gaining popularity due to its relatively new naming, its adoption can be primarily attributed to the ever-increasing complexity of cloud environments.
CNAPP integrates tools that previously functioned separately and is not a singular technology. By integrating these tools, cnapp enables security teams to control and monitor visibility without decelerating the pace of development. This article describes the practical workings of CNAPP, highlights primary challenges it aims to address, and provides insights into the growing perception of legacy tools as insufficient.
The development, deployment, and management of a cloud-native application is done through containers, microservices, and orchestrated using Kubernetes and other tools. This architecture provides scalability and speed, but it also introduces vulnerabilities that traditional security systems cannot handle.
CNAPP is intended to span the entire application lifecycle, beginning with infrastructure-as-code templates and running through to runtime operations. It also integrates multiple technologies, such as CSPM and CWPP, as well as CIEM with IaC scanning, cloud detection, and response capabilities. These components are usually delivered through a single pane of glass, which allows complete visibility and rapid response to issues.
Unlike previous approaches that select either prevention or detection to focus on, CNAPP platforms strive to offer seamless continuous monitoring covering both the development and production stages. They are designed to cater to hybrid and multi-cloud environments, enabling the upkeep of agile workloads and rapid deployments. This alignment makes CNAPP ideal for the seamless collaboration of different teams in DevSecOps, where development, security, and operations merge and move together like in a single, well-oiled machine.
Key Security Challenges in Modern Cloud Environments
The cloud brings a special combination of agility and scale, as well as the concept of shared responsibility. The more a business shifts to a multi-cloud approach, the more difficult it is to secure the assets.
One of the most common problems is cloud misconfiguration. Approximately 23% of cloud security incidents are caused by configuration errors. These errors, which could seem trivial, like broad access controls, can enable critical information to be exposed or grant unwarranted access.
Identity and access management is another chronic issue. Cloud accounts tend to be left over-privileged. This stems from an IT admin not purging default roles or voicing credentials. Coupled with code or infrastructure vulnerabilities, these privileges can pose a significant risk. Over 50% of cloud accounts are said to retain administration privileges, and these dangerous mixtures continue to be ubiquitous. Exposed vulnerabilities that are over-privileged and vulnerable are pervasive and rampant.
Over the years, alert fatigue has become a more prominent issue. Silos created by various tools often overwhelm a single security team with the sheer volume of alerts. Prioritization, effective correlation, and enforcement of action are key components of problem resolution and, without these, critical matters are often overlooked. Furthermore, most organizations utilize more than one cloud provider and thus, security policies are required to be cross-policy consistent but are often difficult to enforce using traditional tools.
Concerns regarding limited visibility into the runtime scope are persistent, however. Serverless functions and containers are, by nature, ephemeral. Tools that do not monitor in real-time cannot safeguard or mitigate the impact of suspicious behavior or anomalies during runtime.
Core Capabilities Found in a CNAPP Solution
A single-system approach is often derived from the combination of various capabilities and, thus, a cnapp platform is well-designed.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM): Analyses cloud configurations and highlights risks against benchmarks such as CIS or NIST. It also audits cloud compliance with ISO 27001 and SOC 2.
Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP): Oversees the containers, virtual machines, and serverless workloads for vulnerabilities and runtime threats. It is capable of detecting unpatched software, suspicious processes, and lateral movement attempts.
Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM): Analyzes roles and permissions in user accounts to identify inactive permissions and potentially risky combinations of access points.
Cloud Detection and Response (CDR): Provides real-time anomaly detection and monitoring of user activity, reducing the time threats can persist undetected and enabling faster response to threats.
Through these capabilities, CNAPP enhances the security teams with greater visibility of their risk exposure. More critically, it enables them to act faster and with greater precision based on the risks identified.
Why Traditional Security Tools Fall Short
There are multiple reasons legacy security tools are unable to succeed in cloud-native environments. Most tools, for instance, are agent-based and need to be deployed on every single asset in order to work. In dynamic environments, such as those with containers that are spun up and down in seconds, this approach will be blind to vast swathes of infrastructure.
A large number of these tools were designed to work with static, monolithic applications and do not have the capability to track constantly changing or scaling resources. For instance, tools that are based on firewalls will not be able to identify misconfigured IAM roles or exposed APIs.
Traditional platforms also tend to be fragmented. One may take care of monitoring workloads, another monitors configuration drift, while yet another one tracks permissions based on identity. With data fragmented across systems, correlating alerts or understanding the full context of an issue becomes impossible.
Ultimately, these tools also lead to alert overload. In the absence of risk-based prioritization, teams may receive hundreds of warnings with low severity, out of which some may be genuine threats, but it becomes increasingly ambiguous which warnings are truthful risks. In some organizations, this contributes to a backlog of alert resolution, which in turn exacerbates the risk posture.
