In today’s fast-paced and ever-evolving digital landscape, cloud native applications have become a crucial component for businesses to stay competitive and agile. However, with the increased reliance on these applications comes the need for robust security measures to protect them from potential threats. This is where CNAPP (Cloud Native Application Protection Platform) come into play. And when it comes to choosing the right CNAPP for your organization, Check Point is a name that should not be overlooked. In this blog post, we will discuss the Top 10 Considerations for Evaluating a CNAPP Solution, with a special focus on Check Point’s CloudGuard offerings. Get ahead of the game and ensure the security of your cloud native applications by incorporating the following essential capabilities:

  • End-to-end and dynamic visibility from code to cloud
  • Automated misconfiguration remediation
  • Proactive threat prevention
  • Shift left with code scanning and API protection

Often, the promise of CNAPP doesn’t align with what vendors deliver. This article summarizes the key considerations and questions that an enterprise should bear in mind when choosing a third party enterprise solution. Please also refer to our ebook, A Buyer’s Guide to Cloud Native Application Protection for additional insights and information.

The Top 10 Considerations for Evaluating a CNAPP Solution

  1. Holistic approach that deeply integrates with the organization’s existing application security stack and promotes a collaborative cross-team security process throughout the application’s lifecycle and ecosystem. This involves determining if the platform seamlessly integrates with your existing development processes and workflows, allowing for secure coding practices and continuous security testing throughout the entire development cycle.
  2. End-to-end visibility of cloud environment assets and data flows. Your CNAPP platform should provide all stakeholders with a centralized view of application security health that is comprehensive, contextual and real time. This requires that your security is cohesive and not piece-meal.
  3. Least privilege access that granularly tailors privileges to the user role, along with other best practices.  Don’t choose any solution that doesn’t let you uphold a zero trust security strategy.
  4. Automation throughout the SDLC and in production environments.  The platform must automate time consuming, tedious and error prone manual application security processes.  For example, you need to be able to automatically and dynamically enforce corporate security controls and industry best practices, as well as detect, alert to, and, where possible, remediate security misconfigurations.
  5. Environment agnostic so it can work everywhere you do, from on premises, across multiple cloud providers, and in hybrid infrastructures. It must be able to orchestrate monitoring and remediation across cloud providers and the organization’s data centers.
  6. Workload architecture agnostic, so it can work with all of today’s modern architectures including, microservices, containers and serverless functions, enforcing security and governance policies automatically for all types of ephemeral runtime workloads.
  7. Pipeline security to help you develop more quickly and securely by providing scanning templates, scripts and images for security gaps before vulnerabilities can be propagated to all the application or runtime environments that use the pipeline.
  8. Shift-left by embedding security into builds while reducing development cycles and supporting a DevSecOps culture. A shift-left culture facilitates continuous feedback, so the application security and workload protection can be tweaked and optimized over time.
  9. Proactive threat prevention to block malicious activity before attackers can cause damage.  Look for robust threat intelligence and behavioral analytics capabilities that reliably pinpoint risk and trigger protective workarounds and other compensating controls.
  10. Risk scoring with deep context, lets you focus on the essential tasks that cannot be overlooked. Effective risk management using contextual AI to provide actionable recommendations, will allow you to prioritize the numerous alerts deriving from unconnected cloud security tools.

The Key Components of CNAPP

The CNAPP label covers a wide variety of products with differing components, as vendors are granted the freedom to create unique combinations of features. While this may initially appear overwhelming, each component serves a unique purpose in securing the development, production and overall cloud environment. However, integrating all of these moving parts seamlessly can be challenging, particularly when selecting the ideal platform for your needs. When searching for a CNAPP solution, it is essential to seek out fundamental features. These include the ability to monitor and regulate both cloud security posture and applications. Key components to look for in a CNAPP solution include:

  • Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) – CSPM is an indispensable aspect of any CNAPP solution, offering automated governance across numerous cloud assets and services. It identifies misconfigurations, enforces security best practices, adheres to compliance frameworks, and assesses overall security posture.
  • Cloud Service Network Security (CSNS) – Traditional, perimeter-based network defenses are ineffective in the “perimeter-free” cloud environment, which is why CSNS is the cloud’s equivalent to traditional firewalls, used to safeguard on-premises infrastructure. CSNS allows businesses to attain the same level of security monitoring and threat prevention found in their on-premises environment, utilizing cloud network security and zero-trust network segmentation for total corporate cybersecurity and regulatory compliance.
  • AI-Based Application Security (AppSec) – AI-Based AppSec offers precise threat prevention, replacing legacy Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) with automation and intelligence. It halts OWASP Top-10 attacks, bot attacks, and any malicious interactions with apps and APIs across any environment.
  • Cloud Workload Protection – Security can be an afterthought when constructing and deploying applications, making vulnerabilities and security breaches a frequent occurrence. Cloud workload protection can detect running workloads in real-time, perform a vulnerability scan to ensure nothing is overlooked, and correct coding errors or inadequate network segmentation.
  • Pipeline Security – The method of constructing code has shifted from creating applications from scratch to assembling them from various open-source components, libraries, and APIs. This introduces new vulnerabilities throughout the software supply chain. Pipeline security simplifies building in static application security testing (SAST) for source code and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) scanning. By shifting left, you’re not just passing the buck, but actually doing security better from the start.

Comprehensive Cloud Security with Cloudguard CNAPP Solution

In conclusion, while it is vital to recognize that not all CNAPP solutions are created equal, certain features are necessary for basic protection. CSPM, CSNS, AI-based AppSec, cloud workload protection, and pipeline security offer businesses the ability to create a comprehensive security strategy to safeguard their development and production environments effectively. CloudGuard is a leading provider of Cloud Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPPs) that take cloud security to the next level, incorporating advanced features like Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM), Effective Risk Management (ERM), and Agentless Workload Posture (AWP).

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