It’s no secret that cloud security is a complex task. Today’s threat actors have grown increasingly capable of sophisticated attacks at scale, increasing the pressure on security teams to sort through incoming signals to quickly detect, digest, and respond to attacks. Modern digital domains can also span across cloud platforms and encompass multiple devices, networks, applications, and identities—making finding your vulnerabilities as pressing as searching for a needle in the proverbial haystack.
But what if you could consolidate all of your cloud security tools under one unified platform? This platform will not only automatically detect, detect, and disrupt attacks but also continuously implement cloud security posture management (CSPM) best practices throughout the full lifecycle of an application. By combining a variety of tools—from vulnerability scanning and compliance testing to real-time threat monitoring—you can achieve much simpler and more efficient security operations.
Read on to learn how you can use a cloud application security platform (CNAPP) to improve security readiness and stay in control, from the early stages of development to deployment and uptime.
Why invest in CNAPP?
CNAPP offers several benefits in a “best-of-breed” approach, where organizations rely on multiple independent solutions to address different aspects of cloud security. Although the best breeding tools may be successful individually, they often require complex integration and consistent management to ensure collective security. Conversely, CNAPP simplifies this process by providing a unified platform that reduces the need for manual integration and maintenance, allowing security teams to focus more on strategic threat response than managing tools.
Because CNAPP integrates multiple cloud security solutions under a unified platform, it can do everything from flagging backend code and infrastructure vulnerabilities to detecting and automatically interrupting attacks at runtime. For complex threats that require human intervention, CNAPP empowers security managers with the context needed to understand and remediate an attack or vulnerability.
An integrated CNAPP also increases visibility and control because it can pull data and correlate information from all stages of a cloud application’s lifecycle into a single pane of glass. It continuously scans your site to ensure you are up to date with security best practices, industry and government regulations, required security patches, and more. This reduces the risk of poor preparation due to human error and improves the overall compliance posture, further advancing security readiness and enabling teams to resolve risks before threat actors exploit them.
How does CNAPP protect against your most pressing threats?
So, how do CNAPP’s benefits stack up against today’s threatening landscape?
Let’s start by looking at API security. Threat actors are increasingly targeting APIs due to their growing prominence in cloud-based environments, making securing APIs a top priority for many organizations. A CNAPP solution can help protect APIs by providing visibility and management of security risks that can arise from previous productions by integrating with various DevOps pipelines. It can also scan the infrastructure for critical vulnerabilities or vulnerabilities that could lead to an attack. In the deployment phase, CNAPP implements key security policies and compliance requirements to ensure that the application infrastructure meets your encryption standards, access controls, and secure configurations. Finally, during operation, CNAPP constantly monitors threats and responds to incoming attacks and anomalous behavior to ensure you are protected at the speed of attacks.
Another focus of runtime security is data security—specifically, data security posture management (DSPM). While DSPM has been around as a concept for years, it was recently covered by Gartner in the 2022 Hype Cycle for Data Security.. DSPM is important because it focuses on protecting the data, not just the infrastructure that resides on it. This is key as threat actors increasingly target data in their attacks. DSPM works to detect and prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data, preventing attackers from extracting or manipulating sensitive data in the event of a breach. By integrating DSPM as part of CNAPP, companies can protect not only their cloud security posture but also the important data residing in their digital environments.
Ultimately, CNAPP is not a product. It is a state-of-the-art multicloud security solution that integrates various security functions into one unified platform to deliver comprehensive, contextual, and efficient security. By implementing CNAPP in their digital environment, security leaders can improve their control and security readiness by consistently and automatically enforcing CSPM throughout the cloud application lifecycle. Ready to learn how to integrate CNAPP with your cloud security strategy?
Check it out Microsoft cloud security solutions to learn more.
Source link