Traditional security technologies and procedures build to safeguard on-premises data centers and endpoints rather than cloud-native programs and services. With the migration to cloud-native technologies, dynamic and transient settings with strong automation, shorter release cycles, and current development processes (e.g., infrastructures as code [IaC], CI/CD pipelines, canisters, serverless services, and Kubernetes), such tools are falling short.
In the public cloud, changes occur often, and the security team must handle quality and reliability without holding down the entire enterprise. They must detect security flaws and vulnerabilities early in development, accelerate repair, and provide ongoing, consistent security and assurances. Unfortunately, completing all of this among the various interdependencies in modern contexts may take much work using a conventional approach.
To optimize cloud security and compliance to support DevOps and reduce friction, security teams must shift their focus from safeguarding infrastructure to safeguarding apps that work on workloads. That means keeping the security of cloud provider configurations and the development process bare minimum, with executable protection providing a valuable layer of extra security. Let’s look at what is CNAPP, its key components, and how it aids enterprises in strengthening their cloud network.
CNAPP and Its Key Components
CNAPP is a term coined by Gartner that consolidates multiple cloud security solutions in one platform. A successful CNAPP assists security teams in correlating information from several sources into a unified picture. To identify and prioritize the organization’s top threats, CNAPP includes the following key components:
- Cloud security posture management (CSPM): It is used in cloud environments to monitor, detect, notify, and rectify compliance issues and misconfigurations.
- Infrastructure as code: It detects misconfigurations in code beginning of the software development life cycle, preventing vulnerabilities at runtime.
- Compliance and management: It maintains a level of compliance and corrects config drifting and policy breaches in multi-cloud settings
- Cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM): It continuously monitors permits and operations to reduce the likelihood of data breaches in public clouds.
- Data protection: It prevents vital data exfiltration due to phishing, hostile insiders, or other cyberattacks.
- Cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP): It provides visibility and oversight for hardware resources, virtual machines, microservices, and cloud hosting applications in hybrid, multi-cloud, and data center settings.
The Difficulties of a Legacy Approach
As businesses expand, they often wind up with a mishmash of technology, with fragmented security controls in numerous cloud settings. Security teams use CSPM, CIEM, CWPP, and other solutions to protect cloud platforms and operational environments. Because of the following factors, they cannot properly concentrate, prioritize, and mitigate risk.
- Visibility flaws and security flaws
- Information overload and time-consuming data correlation procedures are caused by several sources of data points and no single source of truth.
- Alert weariness with a little signal of serious concerns that require limited attention, resources, technical experience, and tool training
- Increased operating complexity and overhead associated with controlling each tool individually
Maintaining correct controls across complicated systems with various technologies requires a lot of time, workforce, and human effort. It’s frequently not enough to stay up.
How Does CNAPP Replace Legacy Approach?
To decrease complexity and expense, CNAPP platforms combine several security products and services, providing:
- The characteristics of the CSPM, CIEM, and CWPP tools coupled
- There is a correlation between vulnerability, context, and connections across the development cycle.
- High-priority threats are identified using rich context.
- Remediation, both guided and automatic, to address vulnerabilities and misconfigurations
- Architectural safeguards to prevent illegal modifications
- Simple interface with SecOps ecosystems for near-real-time alerting
Must Check – WPC2026