These workloads may use a variety of infrastructures, from virtual machines to containerized environments and serverless frameworks. CWPPs help the organization integrate security into each phase of the cloud-enabled application development process.
What Problems Does Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) Solve?
Cloud technology allows software engineers to build and run complex applications at scale. Even a modestly sized software development team can quickly provision a large number of applications, each with its own set of databases, users, and dependencies. All of these contribute to a much wider attack surface than on-premises infrastructure.
Cloud workloads include applications, batch jobs, user requests, and more. All of these may be hosted on different platforms, like Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Computer Cloud (AWS EC2), containerized Google Cloud applications, or Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines. They may also include containerized applications and serverless functions — all of which come with a unique security risk profile.
Each workload is a potential attack vector threat actors might target. Since new workloads are constantly appearing — and some may only be briefly operational — manually securing them is a futile exercise. Security teams need automated solutions for addressing cloud vulnerabilities.
There are two categories of CWPP solutions:
- Agent-based CWPPs work by installing a local security agent on every individual workload. The agent sends data back to the central CWPP management console, which issues commands in response.
- Agentless CWPPs don’t require security agents to be installed on every workload. They integrate at the API or hypervisor level and monitor workloads in a broader, more generalized way.
Each type of CWPP has advantages and drawbacks. Agent-based solutions offer deep oversight and control, but they are resource-intensive and challenging to implement. Agentless options are more accessible and easier to deploy, but offer less visibility.
Key Features CWPP Solutions Offer Security Leaders
High quality CWPP solutions provide security teams with a broad range of security tools in a unified, cloud-optimized package. Some of the integrated capabilities your Cloud Workload Protection Platform should offer include:
Continuous Vulnerability Management
CWPPs that support continuous vulnerability management enable cloud engineering teams to address security concerns whenever they arise. Vulnerabilities may come from newly provisioned cloud assets, unsecured application workloads, or previously undiscovered zero-day threats.
In each case, your CWPP should help the security team prioritize risk mitigation and address the most severe issues first. That requires insight into the context and risk represented by each workload, and the sensitivity of the data it contains.
Configuration and Change Management
CWPPs allow security teams to manage cloud configurations and monitor cloud assets for unauthorized changes. Reputable CWPP solutions perform automated compliance checks against industry standard benchmarks like CIS Benchmarks.
When it detects compliance violations, your CWPP should provide remediation advice. It might recommend ways to automate the enforcement of secure configurations, enabling you to create and enforce cloud security policies in a more efficient way.
Compliance Management
Organizations that adhere to regulatory frameworks like PCI-DSS, FedRAMP, or ISO 27001 need to demonstrate compliance throughout the cloud environment. Even newly provisioned, briefly operational cloud assets must follow the guidelines.
CWPPs conduct automated monitoring and enable compliant cloud security configurations. High quality CWPP vendors also provide detailed reports that allow security leaders to demonstrate compliance easily.
Container Image Analysis
CWPPs also address container security issues, looking for vulnerabilities and indicators of compromise in container images. If a container has outdated packages or appears to be infected with malware, the CWPP may enforce a policy preventing it from entering the runtime environment.
Similarly, you may configure your CWPP to trust certain registries, repositories, and images. Organizations that maintain a list of trusted images can ensure their application components originate from verified sources.
Multi-Cloud Consistency
Maintaining consistent security policies and controls across multiple cloud environments is a steep challenge. CWPPs ensure that a core set of compliant policies are applied across all cloud environments in the organization.
When combined with microsegmentation and runtime protection, security teams gain robust defenses against lateral movement between cloud environments. CWPPs prevent threat actors from bypassing security policies by moving between different types of infrastructure.
5 Benefits of Deploying CWPP Technology
Manually protecting cloud workloads takes time and resources that many organizations can’t afford to spare. Deploying CWPP solutions can improve your cloud security operations in many ways, including:
- Granular visibility. Organizations with multiple cloud vendors can observe how different infrastructure, platform, and software layers interact from a security perspective.
- Cloud-scale application security. The process of securing cloud workloads should be as flexible and scalable as the rest of the cloud.
- Predictable pricing. Instead of paying unpredictable costs for manual cloud security operations, automated CWPP solutions provide a predictable, accessible cost structure to security leaders.
- Customized security controls. Security teams can configure CWPPs to meet their environment’s specific security needs, improving visibility and control over cloud workflows.
- Modern automation capabilities. Automated CWPP technology helps security teams automate time-consuming tasks and improve the quality of their work.
CWPP Implementation Best Practices
Here are some things to keep in mind when pursuing a CWPP implementation initiative:
- Design for scalability. Prioritize the control and visibility of cloud workloads regardless of their size and location.
- Adhere to zero trust. Avoid setting overly permissive access control policies and deny unjustified connections by default.
- Maintain API security. Configure your CWPP tools to expose functionality using APIs, and apply security rules directly through them.
- Secure the entire software development lifecycle. Workload compliance should be an integral part of the Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) cycle.
- Don’t forget agentless use cases. You may not be able to use the agent-based approach for every workload. Make sure you have a solution for scenarios where CWPP agents can’t be used.
Entrust Novawatch with Cloud Security
Novawatch simplifies the process of securing complex cloud-based workflows using high-performance prevention-based technologies like Check Point CloudGuard and Rapid7 InsightCloudSec. Our team of highly skilled specialists can help you deploy and monitor automated cloud security controls for detecting and remediating vulnerabilities early in the software development lifecycle.
