As a developer or member of a DevOps team, you probably know the stress and satisfaction of pouring your heart and soul into developing a groundbreaking cloud-native application. But without proper protection, your hard work could be compromised in seconds. That's where CNAPP comes in, revolutionizing how we can ensure the security of our applications. 

As the world increasingly relies on cloud-native technologies and microservices, up to 45% of breaches are cloud-based. CNAPPs are designed to help address this with a comprehensive platform for securing cloud-native applications. CNAPPs simplify application protection at every stage of their lifecycle from a wide range of threats and inbuilt vulnerabilities, including malware, DDoS attacks, cloud misconfigurations, and data breaches. Let's take a closer look at how this works.

What is CNAPP?

CNAPP (cloud-native application protection platform) streamlines the process of monitoring, identifying, and responding to possible security threats and vulnerabilities in the cloud. It is designed to work seamlessly with container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes and provides a range of security features, including vulnerability management, intrusion detection, and application layer security.

At its core, CNAPP is all about providing comprehensive security coverage for cloud-native applications. It addresses many challenges developers face when working with these technologies, including visibility, scalability, and flexibility.

The benefits of CNAPP

• Integrated platform approach: Simplifies security management with a single, comprehensive platform. 35% of all devs say that they have too many tools in their stack. Security shouldn't become an additional burden.
• Saves time and resources: Reduces the need for multiple security tools
• Improved security posture: Helps teams strengthen their overall security with a more comprehensive approach 
• Compliance reporting: Provides reports and metrics for regulatory compliance
• Threat intelligence feeds: Integrates with threat intelligence feeds to stay up-to-date on emerging threats

Key Features to Look for in a CNAPP Solution

When selecting a CNAPP solution, it's important to look for the following:

Core capabilities:

• Real-time threat detection and response
• Automatic vulnerability scanning
• Integration with your organization's existing security tools and technologies

Recommended capabilities:

• Provides compliance reports to help your organization stay compliant with relevant regulations and standards
• Integrates with threat intelligence feeds to keep your organization up-to-date on emerging threats and potential vulnerabilities
• Offers APIs for automation and orchestration of security policies

Optional capabilities:

• Supports multiple cloud providers, allowing for cloud deployment flexibility and scalability
• Includes container-specific security features, such as runtime protection and container image scanning
• Provides advanced analytics and machine-learning capabilities to improve threat detection and response

10 Top CNAPP Software Vendors for 2023 

1. CrowdStrike

Price: Annual plans start at $299.95 for a minimum of five devices.

Main Features: 

• Unified cloud-native application security platform
• Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) function
• Cloud Workload Protection (CWPP) function, including containers and Kubernetes
• Designed and built for speed, scale, and reliability
• Cloud-native, full-stack security to defend against cloud breaches and optimize multi-cloud deployments

Best for: Mid-size to enterprise corporations looking for a comprehensive, cloud-native solution.

Review: "Crowdstrike Cloud Security has enabled more profound insights and visibility into processes running within our cloud infrastructure."

2. CloudGuard CNAPP, by CheckPoint 

Price: Contact the company for a quote.

Main Features: 

• Protects various cloud workloads, from virtual machines to serverless functions
• Provides prevention capabilities to detect threats before they cause damage
• Offers expanded capabilities, including Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM), Agentless Workload Posture (AWP), Pipeline Security, and Effective Risk Management (ERM)
• Enables rapid deployment while supporting auto-scaling and high availability across multiple Availability Zones

Best for: Large organizations seeking an advanced threat prevention solution to prevent sophisticated threats and assist with compliance.

Review: "It has several very useful report types; the features of each are very good, and any of the compliance team can view/generate a report."

3. Ermetic 

Price: Contact the company for a quote.

Main Features: 

• Reveals and prioritizes security gaps in AWS, Azure, and GCP
• Enables immediate remediation of security gaps
• Uses identity-first approach to automate complex cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) and cloud security posture management (CSPM) operations
• Unifies full asset discovery, deep risk analysis, runtime threat detection, and compliance reporting
• Provides pinpoint visualization and step-by-step guidance

Best for: Mid-market to enterprise-level organizations that want to improve their cloud security policies 

Review: "With Ermetic, auditing our AWS environment has become much easier. We can see exactly what entities have excessive privileges and where they come from." 

4. Skyhawk

Price: Free demo available.

Main Features: 

• Secures the whole cloud infrastructure across many security domains (such as how users and apps are using and accessing specific hosts, users, networks, and firewall functions). 
• Rule-based and ML-based detectors contextualize relevant threats based on behavioral observations
• Continuously monitors the environment and behaviors of its users, assigning risk scores to abnormalities to prevent false positives
• Analyzes events and alerts the SOC team in real time 

Best for: Established, fully cloud-based companies that struggle with alert fatigue

Review: "Excellent service, training, and technical support. The integration is very easy with zero unavailability."

5. Lacework 

Price: Contact the company for a quote.

Main Features: 

• Enables users to prioritize risks, find known and unknown threats faster, achieve continuous cloud compliance, and develop secure code without slowing down
• Unified platform to accomplish common cloud use cases: posture management, workload protection, vulnerability management, compliance, container security, and more
• Patented anomaly detection technology to reduce alert noise

Best for: Mid-market organizations looking for a unified cloud solution to enhance visibility

Review: "Lacework as a tool has been really insightful as it has really brought about the transparency and visibility that we were looking for."

6. Orca Security

Price: Contact the company for a quote.

Main Features: 

• Provides instant-on security and compliance for AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes without agents or sidecars
• Reads cloud configuration and workloads' runtime, blocks storage out-of-band, detects vulnerabilities, malware, misconfigurations, lateral movement risk, weak and leaked passwords, and unsecured PII

Best for: Businesses of all sizes looking to track vulnerabilities and security risks

Review: "Orca is an excellent platform for assessing the security posture of all your cloud accounts in a single interface."

7. PingSafe

Price: Contact the company for a quote.

Main Features: 

• Protects multi-cloud environments
• Includes various components for different use cases, such as cloud misconfigurations, container and Kubernetes security, vulnerability management, and serverless security
• Designed to be comprehensive and cover all necessary security components for multi-cloud environments

Best for: Mid-market organizations looking for a solution to supplement their security strategies

Review: "PingSafe helps us stay on top of potential misconfigurations in our cloud environment, giving our security team peace of mind."

8. Sysdig Secure 

Price: Contact the company for a quote.

Main Features: 

• Helps companies secure and accelerate innovation in the cloud
• Stops threats in real time and reduces vulnerabilities by up to 95%
• Allows dev and security teams to focus on the vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, permissions, and threats that matter most by knowing what is running in production across cloud and containers

Best for: Enterprise-level organizations looking for a solution to help them monitor the security of their cloud assets

Review: "Sysdig is exceptional in runtime protection areas. From simple container and process monitoring until the point of the actual hardening."

9. Prisma Cloud, by Palo Alto Networks

Price: Contact the company for a quote.

Main Features: 

• Secures cloud-native applications from code to cloud
• Enables effective collaboration between security and DevOps teams
• Offers prevention-first protection against zero-day vulnerabilities
• Facilitates faster application delivery with code-to-cloud protection

Best for: Enterprise-level organizations looking to enhance their cloud security

Review: "This is one of the best tools for security management, be it network or host security."

10. Runecast

Price: Contact the company for a quote. 

Main Features: 

• Proactive scanning in real-time to uncover potential risks and provide remediation solutions before issues develop into a major outage
• Leverages advanced NLP capabilities to provide automated audits for security compliance standards, vulnerabilities, and technology vendor best practices
• Features a customizable, transparent rules engine to provide additional security

Best for: Mid-market to enterprise-level organizations looking to maintain compliance and best security practices

Review: "Runecast has a ton of security standards to help achieve easy audit ratification."

Revolutionize Your Application Security with Comprehensive Solutions

Protecting cloud-native applications is crucial, and CNAPPs simplify that process. But no single solution fits all--when choosing a CNAPP, it's essential to consider the capabilities you need to meet your organization's unique requirements. Meanwhile, additional tools such as SpectralOps can help you cover your bases by providing comprehensive security for both traditional and cloud applications. Our developer-first solution combines AI and hundreds of detectors to protect code, assets, and infrastructure in real time, allowing you to avoid costly mistakes caused by security misconfigurations and exposed credentials. Schedule a free demo today.