What Network Security Practitioners Must Know About Cloud Native Security

What is Cloud Native?

"Cloud Native" refers to an application development model designed specifically for cloud environments. The core concept of cloud native is to design applications as microservice architectures, encapsulate them through containerization technology, and use the elasticity, scalability, automation, and high availability of cloud infrastructure to run and manage these applications. A typical cloud native technology stack includes containers (such as Docker), microservices, container orchestration systems (such as k8s), serverless architectures (such as AWS Lambda), service meshes, and DevOps tool chains.

The key features of cloud native include the following:

• Microservice architecture: decompose the application into multiple independent small services, each performing independent functions.
• Containerization: Applications and dependencies are packaged into lightweight, portable containers to facilitate running across environments.
• Automation: Use CI/CD pipelines to achieve continuous integration and deployment of applications.
• Scalability: Rapidly expand or reduce the computing and storage resources of an application through the elasticity of cloud resources.
• Dynamic management: Based on tools such as k8s, container scheduling and management are implemented to automatically handle issues such as resource allocation and fault repair.

The advantages of cloud-native architecture are obvious, but it also brings new security challenges. These challenges force us to rethink how to protect modern applications and infrastructure, which is cloud-native security.

What is cloud native security?

Cloud native security is a comprehensive security approach for cloud native applications and their infrastructure. Unlike traditional security solutions, cloud native security must deal with the complexity brought by emerging technologies such as containers, serverless architecture, microservices, CI/CD pipelines, etc.

Its core goal is to protect all stages of the application life cycle, from development, deployment to runtime environment. This security strategy must be able to cope with distributed architecture, dynamic resource allocation, and complex permission management requirements without affecting the agility and innovation of the development team.

Some of the key challenges of cloud-native security include:

• Multi-layered security: Security controls need to be implemented at multiple levels (such as containers, clusters, service meshes, applications, etc.).
• Automated security: Security measures need to be seamlessly integrated with DevOps processes to automate responses to threats and vulnerabilities.
• Security in dynamic environments: The lifecycle of containers and microservices is extremely short, and security measures must be able to adjust and respond in real time.
• Data security and compliance: Ensure data security and compliance in cloud environments, especially in complex scenarios across multiple cloud service providers.

The implementation of cloud native security relies on multiple security components and technologies. Some of the key concepts and tools include CWPP, CSPM, CASB, CNAPP, and WAAP.

CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platform)

CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platform) is a security solution specifically designed to protect workloads in cloud environments, such as containers, virtual machines, serverless functions, etc. With the popularity of cloud-native architecture, workload types have become more diverse and dynamic, and traditional security tools have difficulty effectively protecting these distributed, multi-layered workloads.

CWPP usually has the following functions:

• Workload visualization: Provides real-time monitoring of all workloads to ensure that any abnormal behavior or attacks can be discovered in a timely manner.
• Vulnerability management: Scan and detect security vulnerabilities in container images and code to ensure timely repairs during the development and deployment stages.
• Runtime protection: Provides real-time protection while workloads are running, detecting and blocking potential attacks.
• Intrusion detection and response: Identify and respond to various attacks such as ransomware, malicious code, etc. through technologies such as behavioral analysis.

CWPP focuses on enabling unified workload security, regardless of whether those workloads are running in on-premises data centers, public clouds, or multi-cloud environments.

CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management)

CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management) is a security tool that helps organizations manage cloud environment configuration risks. Due to the complexity and scalability of cloud environment configuration, configuration errors (such as overly open permissions, incorrect access control, etc.) may lead to serious security issues.

The core functions of CSPM include:

• Automated configuration auditing: Use automated tools to regularly scan the configuration of the cloud environment and identify configuration items that do not comply with security policies.
• Compliance management: Ensure that cloud resources and applications comply with various industry standards and regulatory requirements, such as GDPR, ISO 27001, etc.
• Security visualization across cloud environments: Provides a unified view of different configurations in multi-cloud environments, making it easier for enterprise security teams to monitor and manage.
• Automated remediation: Once configuration errors are discovered, CSPM can fix them in an automated way, reducing human intervention and potential security vulnerabilities.

CSPM solves the security risks caused by human configuration errors in cloud infrastructure and is one of the important tools for achieving cloud-native security.

CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker)

CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker) is a security policy enforcement point located between cloud service users and cloud service providers to ensure the security of users accessing cloud resources. As enterprises increasingly adopt SaaS (such as Office 365, Salesforce) and other services, traditional network boundaries are gradually disappearing, which poses new challenges to enterprise access control and data protection.

CASBs typically have the following capabilities:

• User access control: Ensure that only authorized users can access specific cloud resources, and implement dynamic access control based on factors such as user identity, device, and geographic location.
• Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Monitor and prevent sensitive data from leaking through cloud applications in real time, ensuring that data remains encrypted during transmission and storage.
• Threat Detection and Response: Analyze user behavior to detect abnormal activities, such as unauthorized logins, data leakage attempts, etc., and respond in a timely manner.
• Cloud Service Visibility: Provides a comprehensive view of all cloud services used within the organization, including SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS services, helping enterprises monitor and control the use of these services.

CASB can help enterprises effectively manage and protect the cloud services they use and is a key tool for solving cloud access security issues.

CNAPP (Cloud Native Application Protection Platform)

CNAPP (Cloud Native Application Protection Platform) is a platform that integrates multiple security functions and is specifically designed to protect cloud native applications and their infrastructure. It combines the capabilities of CWPP and CSPM to provide comprehensive security protection from development to runtime.

CNAPP's core capabilities include:

• Application security scanning: During the development phase, scan application code and dependencies to ensure there are no known security vulnerabilities.
• Workload protection: Protect running workloads such as containers and virtual machines from attacks through real-time monitoring and behavior analysis.
• Infrastructure configuration security: Similar to CSPM, it ensures that the configuration of the cloud environment meets security standards and automatically fixes configuration errors.
• Threat Detection and Response: Integrates multi-layered threat detection capabilities to help security teams quickly identify and respond to complex attacks.

CNAPP's goal is to integrate application security, workload protection, and cloud infrastructure security through a unified platform to provide a comprehensive cloud-native security solution.

WAAP (Web Application and API Protection)

WAAP (Web Application and API Protection) is a security solution specifically designed to protect web applications and APIs. With the popularity of microservice architecture, APIs have become a key communication method for cloud-native applications, and protecting APIs from attacks has become critical.

WAAP features include:

• Web Application Firewall (WAF): Filters and monitors HTTP traffic to prevent common web attacks such as SQL injection, XSS, etc.
• API security: Real-time detection and prevention of attacks against APIs, such as API hijacking, overuse, etc.
• DDoS Protection: Protect web applications and APIs from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and ensure service availability.
• Bot Protection: Detects and blocks automated attacks by malicious bots on web applications and APIs.

WAAP is the last line of defense for protecting cloud-native application security, especially for the increasingly complex API ecosystem.

Summarize

Cloud native security is a complex and dynamic field that requires the collaboration of multiple tools and technologies. CWPP, CSPM, CASB, CNAPP and WAAP are solutions designed to address specific security challenges in cloud native architectures, helping enterprises maintain agility and efficiency in development and operations while protecting their cloud native applications and infrastructure.