Best Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms

Cloud Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPPs) represent a revolutionary approach to securing cloud-native applications throughout their entire lifecycle. As organizations transition to cloud-native architectures and DevOps methodologies, the need for a unified and integrated security solution has become paramount.

Traditionally, security functions for cloud-native applications have been fragmented across multiple tools and platforms, leading to siloed operations, visibility gaps, and increased complexity. CNAPPs, a category defined by Gartner (and historically referred to as Cloud Native Security Platforms by Palo Alto Networks), aim to consolidate and centralize these disparate security functions into a single user interface.

At the core of a CNAPP solution are the following key components:

• Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM): Monitors and enforces security policies, configurations, and compliance across cloud infrastructure, applications, and environments.
• Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP): Provides runtime protection for cloud workloads, containers, and serverless functions, including vulnerability management, threat detection, and incident response.
• Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM): Manages and governs access permissions, entitlements, and identities across cloud infrastructure, ensuring the principles of least privilege are enforced.
• CI/CD Security: Integrates security into the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, enabling early detection and remediation of vulnerabilities and misconfigurations during the development cycle.

By consolidating these capabilities into a unified platform, CNAPPs offer end-to-end security for cloud-native applications, providing visibility across organizational silos and enabling collaboration between security, cloud infrastructure, and DevOps teams. This integrated approach ensures that applications are protected at runtime while simultaneously incorporating security into development workflows, allowing for the identification and remediation of flaws early in the application lifecycle.

With CNAPPs, organizations can achieve a comprehensive and cohesive security posture, streamline security operations, and accelerate the delivery of secure cloud-native applications, all while reducing operational complexity and maintaining compliance with industry standards and regulations.