CNAPP combines several cybersecurity capabilities—cloud security posture management (CSPM), cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM), and cloud workload protection (CWP), among others—into one platform. This platform protects your organization through every operation, from concept development to runtime use. And it’s tailored to applications native to a multicloud environment. As a result, you can both ensure management access and strengthen app-related defenses against potential vulnerabilities in multicloud setups.

Choosing CNAPP as your solution can help chief information security officers (CISOs) build impact.¹ When weighing the value of CNAPP, consider these numbers:

• 40% of organizations used a CNAPP in 2023 and an additional 45% expect to use one by the end of 2024.²
• 87% of organizations embrace multicloud.³
• 82% of breaches involved data stored in the cloud.⁴
• $4.45 million is the average cost of a data breach.⁵
• 54% of organizations do not include security in the development phase.⁶

Read on for five of the biggest insights found in the guide and download “From plan to deployment: implementing a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) strategy” to dive deeper into this important subject. Use it as a valuable resource to guide your CNAPP planning.

Implementing a CNAPP strategy

Learn how a cloud-native application protection platform can strengthen your organization's security strategy.

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Insight #1: AI can tighten security and deliver insights

AI and machine learning play key roles in threat mitigation and security operations for cloud security. In fact, they could even be considered the backbone of these strategies because they give you the ability to analyze and respond to threats in real-time. Seconds matter in cybersecurity and could be the difference between minimal and major damage from a cyberattack.

AI and machine learning can also provide an assist by increasing predictive analysis and automating security tasks, helping your employees prioritize strategic security tasks. Manually managing today’s complex cloud infrastructures simply isn’t possible. The key is to include human oversight with human-in-the-loop monitoring of the technologies.

Insight #2: CNAPP can address challenges like alert overload and more

CNAPP holds day-to-day ease for security teams and strategic value for decision-makers. And there’s an urgent need for an end-to-end platform for cloud security—even better if powered by AI and machine learning. CNAPP helps you address some of the biggest challenges in cloud security, including:

• Building security into software during development: Security as code, which involves building security into software during development, will keep gaining momentum. CNAPP benefits the development process in several ways, including ensuring security is part of application development and forging collaboration between the developers and security teams.  
• Improving multicloud security posture: With CNAPP solutions, you can get an aggregation and analysis of data from multiple cloud platforms and services in a unified dashboard. These centralized insights can help security teams prioritize tasks more easily. Expanding multicloud visibility and enhancing multiplatform protection are two advantages of recent Microsoft Security innovations.
• Decreasing costs and tackling advanced cyberthreats: Security operations center (SOC) analysts and security admins could be easily overwhelmed by the modern digital threat landscape and frustrated by the number of signals. The predictive analytics of CNAPP solutions can make it easier for them to identify and mitigate potential risks while automating security responses to threats.

Insight #3: Effective cybersecurity takes a good partner  

Keeping user needs in mind, Microsoft has its own CNAPP solution—Microsoft Defender for Cloud. This comprehensive security solution has robust security features to safeguard a wide array of resources, including servers, containers, databases, applications, and, crucially, data storage solutions like Microsoft Azure Storage, across various cloud platforms. Implementing Microsoft Defender for Cloud can protect against current threats and position your organization to confidently address emerging security threats in the cloud.

Cybersecurity is a dual effort between cloud service providers and users. Microsoft Defender for Cloud models this collaborative approach with a more integrated and proactive strategy than is common with traditional security. Among other attributes, it aligns with DevOps, features rapid deployment capabilities, and offers two levels of CSPM functionality—foundational and premium from an offering called Microsoft Defender Cloud Security Posture Management. Deploying CSPM services should be a part of your CNAPP strategy.

It also integrates with other cybersecurity solutions. But given the way Microsoft embraces innovation, it’s probably no surprise that we’ll continue to evolve this solution to keep pace with fluid technological advancement. So, as usual, watch this space for exciting announcements to come.

Insight #4: Operationalizing CNAPP is a multipronged approach

With any solution, the benefits can’t be realized if your users aren’t adopting it. Operationalizing Microsoft Defender for Cloud takes both integrating it into daily operations and satisfying your users’ needs by continuously evolving cloud security. You want your users to manage it and use the platform’s capabilities. This includes its functionalities across Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform.

Other factors of operationalizing CNAPP include:

• Monitoring continuously, evaluating risk, and assessing status.
• Managing identity entitlement.
• Training employees to use security tools.
• Setting processes in place that can mitigate and remediate unhealthy resources.
• Fostering a culture of security awareness.

Insight #5: CNAPP is a critical part of a modern SOC

The SOC is critical and you strive for it to be efficient and effective. The insights from a CNAPP like Microsoft Defender for Cloud can dramatically transform SOC operations due to its total visibility, real-time monitoring, compliance and risk management tools, multiple integrations, and advanced analytics.

You can take a more proactive, strategic approach to cloud security with capabilities like:

• Detailed insights into threats and vulnerabilities, including their possible severity and impact.
• Automated compliance assessments based on industry standards.
• Post-incident analysis support through incident information.

Strengthening the SOC even further is a new Microsoft Defender for Cloud integration with Microsoft Defender XDR. You gain access to Defender for Cloud alerts and incidents within the Microsoft Defender portal for richer investigation context.

These highlights are just the beginning of what you can accomplish with CNAPP.

Explore the future of CNAPP and cloud security

Building a secure-first organization is critical to counter the continual stream of cyberthreats and the increasingly sophisticated nature of them. The future holds significant promise for CNAPP, and Microsoft is leading in this effort with solutions like Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Get details on CNAPP use case scenarios and Defender for Cloud’s integrations with other Microsoft products—and strategies for adopting and operationalizing it—in our guide “From plan to deployment: implementing a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) strategy.” Or, watch our podcast for an expert discussion on how CNAPP helps you address modern challenges. Learn more about how Defender for Cloud can help you protect your multicloud resources, workloads, and apps.

Learn more

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

¹Want to build impact as a CISO? Choose CNAPP as your solution, CSO. May 26, 2024. 

²The future of cloud security: Top trends to watch in 2024, InfoWorld. March 14, 2024. 

³2023 State of the Cloud Report, Flexera.

⁴Microsoft Enterprise DevOps Report. 

⁵Cost of a Data Breach Report, IBM. 2023. 

⁶Microsoft Cloud Security Priorities and Practices Research. 

The post 5 ways a CNAPP can strengthen your multicloud security environment appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

The answer is an end-to-end solution that offers comprehensive cloud security from development to runtime—a Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP).

Let’s dive into what’s driving CNAPP adoption and walk through how Microsoft Defender for Cloud—one of the only platforms with comprehensive coverage and integrated insights all in one solution—can help organizations embed security from code to cloud.

What is CNAPP, and why does it matter?

CNAPPs are the leading edge of cloud security. A CNAPP unifies security and compliance capabilities to prevent, detect, and respond to modern cloud security threats from development to runtime.

A CNAPP delivers a unified experience for organizations that synthesizes insights and drives effective collaboration among developers, DevOps teams, security teams, and security operations center (SOC) analysts to reduce excessive risks for cloud-native applications and to embed security across the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) lifecycle.

Why do organizations need a CNAPP for modern cloud security?

A CNAPP directly addresses critical challenges faced by cloud security teams as they aim to strengthen their security posture, detect and respond to threats, and prevent critical data breaches:

• The need for “shifting security left” into the DevOps pipeline: Development and security teams need to be empowered to collaborate to embed security into the code itself so that cloud-native applications can start secure and stay secure.
• Lack of visibility and prioritization in managing multicloud security posture: The dynamic nature of cloud-native applications creates flexibility but also blind spots for posture management. Multicloud and hybrid scenarios add to the complexity, making a centralized, prioritized view with contextual security insights crucial to reducing recommendation fatigue and helping security teams focus on what matters.
• Advanced threat actors and increasing cost of breach: The evolving threat landscape worsens the threat response challenge, resulting in SOC analysts and security admin teams that are overwhelmed by mounting threat signals.
• Mismanaged and misconfigured cloud infrastructure entitlement: Security admins also worry about overprivileged access to infrastructure, which can leave room for exploitation and infiltration.

Key CNAPP capabilities

Security teams need an end-to-end platform for cloud security. This means security integration into DevOps, visibility across their multicloud environments, a prioritized view of their most critical vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, built-in governance and automated remediation tools, and the means to detect and respond to modern threats across their cloud workloads.

To achieve this, an effective CNAPP should combine capabilities across cloud security posture management, DevOps security management, cloud workload protection, cloud infrastructure entitlement management, and network security.

Microsoft is recognized as a Representative Vendor in the Gartner® 2023 Market Guide for Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPPs).

Microsoft’s unified CNAPP includes:

• Cloud security posture management (CSPM): CSPM solutions provide visibility across multicloud and hybrid environments from development to runtime, provide alerts and recommendations to security teams on critical vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that could lead to issues, and have built-in workflows to strengthen security posture and help drive remediation (and at scale). Microsoft Defender Cloud Security Posture Management in Defender for Cloud helps cut through the noise to focus on remediating your most critical risk with integrated insights across the SOC, DevOps, External Attack Surface Management (EASM), identity and access management, and compliance. It has a single connected view in the cloud security graph with attack path analysis to help security teams identify exploitable resource paths and the built-in tools to mitigate risk across cloud environments.
• Cloud workload protection (CWP): CWP solutions are comprehensive services that provide real-time detection and response to modern threats across your cloud workloads including virtual machines, containers and Kubernetes, databases, storage accounts, network layers, app Services, and more. Cloud Workload Protection in Defender for Cloud analyzes workloads using advanced analytics and threat intelligence to help reduce the attack surface and respond to emerging threats quickly. The integrated experience with Microsoft 365 Defender and Microsoft Sentinel enables a comprehensive detection and response solution for a modern security operations center.
• DevOps security: Microsoft Defender for DevOps in Defender for Cloud empowers security teams to unify, strengthen, and manage multipipeline DevOps security, shift security left, and enable code-to-cloud protections in a central console. This solution helps security teams rightfully focus on critical evolving threats by enabling the security of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) templates and container images to minimize cloud misconfigurations reaching production environments, and correlate contextual cloud security intelligence from runtime to dev platforms to prioritize remediation in code.
• Cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM): Permissions give identities the ability to perform an action on a resource. Across major clouds, more than 40,000 permissions can be granted, of which over 50 percent are high risk, meaning they can cause service disruption, service degradation, or data leakage when used improperly.¹ To help support a viable multicloud strategy and avoid accidental or malicious permission misuse, streamlined permissions management is essential. Microsoft Entra Permissions Management helps you understand the real footprint of your cloud infrastructure entitlements, prevent permissions creep, and enforce the principle of least privilege across your multicloud environment. Defender for Cloud integrates with Permissions Management, enabling security teams to get unified visibility and recommendations in a central cloud security dashboard.
• Network security: Network security protects your cloud network infrastructure and applications from distributed denial-of-service, web application, and network attacks. Azure Network Security offers the full benefits of cloud-native services for securing your cloud and hybrid network infrastructure and applications. Based on Zero Trust network security, Azure Network Security is designed to provide organizations with granular segmentation controls, intelligent threat protection by Microsoft Threat Intelligence, traffic encryption in transit and at rest, and private access linking to infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and on-premises resources. Defender for Cloud continuously analyzes the security state of  Azure resources for network security best practices. Security teams can get adaptive recommendations for network hardening in a central place and use the end-to-end view to improve security posture across network infrastructure and applications.

Microsoft’s CNAPP: Comprehensive cloud-native protection with unparalleled integrated insights

Microsoft’s comprehensive CNAPP seamlessly combines security and compliance capabilities into a single platform to provide end-to-end cloud security for full-stack workloads across Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Azure Cloud Services. Security admins no longer need to manually synthesize data and tools across products, and instead can proactively address security threats across their multicloud and hybrid environments in a single platform.

Defender for Cloud is empowering security teams with a more comprehensive and differentiated approach:

• Integrated CNAPP capabilities and more in a single portal on a single platform: All managed in Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations get centralized visibility and integrated insights across Azure Network Security, Permissions Management, Microsoft 365 Defender for detection and response, and Microsoft Sentinel for security information and event management and security orchestration, automation, and response capabilities.
• Additional capabilities to accelerate cloud-native protection: Further, Defender for Cloud’s integration with Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management enables true identification of internet-exposed resources, augmenting signals from configurations and cloud APIs.
• Protection across your multicloud data estate: Security teams can enable comprehensive data protection in cloud storage and SQL database resources across PaaS, IaaS, and open-source databases, and detect potential threats to data such as brute-force attacks, SQL injection, and suspicious data extraction.
• Full lifecycle protection: Microsoft helps security teams minimize vulnerabilities from making it to production with code scanning and IaC scanning, and reduce time to remediate with integrated workflows into developer environments. Microsoft Defender for DevOps integrations with Azure DevOps and GitHub unify multipipeline DevOps security and ensure secure development.
• Unparalleled view of the evolving threat landscape: Defender for Cloud leverages leverages the comprehensive threat intelligence coming from synthesizing 65 trillion signals a day to identify emerging threat vectors and help security teams respond quickly.  
• Cloud scale and integrated CNAPP: Defender for Cloud is designed with scale and insights gained from running Microsoft Azure, one of the leading public cloud platforms in the industry. Microsoft is the only public cloud provider to enable a CNAPP solution natively in the cloud portal, helping security teams simplify security management in Azure and extend it to other clouds.

Even with these capabilities, Microsoft is only getting started. And our continued investments for ushering the next wave of cloud-native security is featured in Omdia’s February report on Defender for Cloud, “Microsoft is developing a full cloud-native security platform.“

More innovations to come

To learn more about critical upcoming CNAPP innovations in Microsoft Defender for Cloud, register to join me at Microsoft Secure, our free, virtual Microsoft Security event on March 28, 2023, as I’ll share news in Breakout Session 11, “Protect multicloud environments with cloud-native security innovations.” And immediately following this session, attend our CNAPP interactive product session (CATE11) to get your questions answered.

You can also explore Microsoft Defender for Cloud and sign up for a free trial today.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and Twitter (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

¹2021 State of Cloud Permissions Risks Report, Microsoft. 2021.

Gartner® , Market Guide for Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms, March 14, 2023. Neil MacDonald, et al.

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