Skip to main content

What is Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP)?

Cloud adoption is a significant engine of digital transformation and growth for modern organizations, enabling them to provide apps and services to clients with the speed and scalability that can only be provided by the cloud. However, safeguarding the cloud requires securing an ever-expanding attack surface, which includes cloud workloads, virtual servers, and other technologies that support your cloud environment.

Cloud workload protection is crucial since it provides breach protection for workloads, containers, and Kubernetes and enables enterprises to continue developing, deploying, and securing cloud applications with speed and confidence. Now is the time to develop or revise your cloud security plan, creating efficient and effective controls and ensuring that your security team can monitor without interfering with business operations.

In this article, we will cover what cloud workload protection (CWP) and cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP) are, why organizations need CWPP, the benefits of CWPP, how CWPP works, and the key capabilities of an effective CWPP. We will also give a list of the best CWPPs in the market.

What are Cloud Workload Protection (CWP) and Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP)?​

Cloud workloads consist of the processing, storage, and networking capabilities required for cloud-based applications. Databases, web servers, virtual machines, and containers are all instances of cloud-based workloads. These workloads have specific security requirements that vary from those of conventional IT systems.

Cloud Workload Protection (CWP) is the technique of continually monitoring cloud workloads and containers for threats and deleting them. A Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) is a security solution that safeguards all sorts of workloads in any location, providing unified cloud workload protection across various providers.

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPPs) are intended to offer security customized to the demands of workloads deployed in public, private, or hybrid cloud environments. They maintain the security of applications by securing the application and all of its accompanying cloud capabilities. CWPPs are often agent-based, which means that a software agent is permanently operating on the protected computer, gathering security-relevant data and events, and transferring them to a cloud service. The cloud-based service monitors all devices under its control generates warnings for possible security issues and warns users accordingly.

Cloud workloads protection depends on two distinct methods:

  • Microsegmentation: Micro-segmentation enables security architects to separate data on a workload segment into specified security segments. They are thereafter able to establish security controls for each part. Micro-segmentation leverages network virtualization to build flexible security rules that protect workloads rather than physical firewalls. This procedure stops malicious software from jumping from server to server inside an environment.

  • Bare-metal Hypervisors: Bare Metal Hypervisor provides extra safety for cloud workloads. A hypervisor is a sort of virtualization software that enables the creation and control of virtual machines by separating the hardware and software of a computer. The hypervisor is put on the machine as an extra hardware component between the hardware and the operating system. The process then generates a virtual machine that is segregated from other virtual machines. If a single server is compromised, the problem is isolated to that server.

Why Do You Need CWPP?​

Organizations may only fully benefit from the cloud if they develop apps that use all of its features. A shift-left strategy to cloud adoption, in which applications meant to function on-premises are simply replicated in the cloud, might result in a costly and underperforming cloud implementation.

As a result of developers using cloud workloads as part of DevOps development cycles, apps are rapidly produced and deployed without respect for security. Moreover, these apps are often exposed to the public and distributed across numerous cloud environments, making them challenging to manage and safeguard.

Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) is crucial because it offers a scalable, frictionless option for enabling cloud workload protection. CWPP solutions reduce the effects of insufficient security procedures during the quick development cycles typical of DevOps.

What are the Challenges of Cloud Workload Protection?​

Cloud computing necessitates security measures from both users and service providers since public cloud installations utilize a shared responsibility model. Both the cloud service provider and the client are responsible for ensuring security within their respective spheres of influence.

In general, the provider is accountable for cloud security. This covers accessibility and infrastructure. The client is responsible for cloud security. Included in this are their apps, identity management, data, and encryption. As workloads are migrated to the cloud, the distinctive qualities and capabilities of the cloud provide new security issues for clients. The main challenges of cloud workload security are as follows:

  • Visibility: Blind spots result in failures in silence and eventually breaches. Visibility of cloud-based workloads is difficult for a variety of reasons. Traditional security technologies are incapable of providing granular visibility. Since visibility is restricted to the host, it is difficult to distinguish between events made by containers and those generated by the host using tools such as Linux logs. When containers are terminated, forensic evidence is destroyed, which makes it harder to gather data and investigate incidents. Moreover, container mobility presents additional obstacles; deployment across cloud environments leads to decentralized container restrictions that hinder overall visibility.

  • Increased Attack Surface: More systems and instances dispersed over several off-premises locations increase risk and the attack surface. No longer is the protection of physical data centers and servers sufficient. Having a presence in the cloud entails the added duty of safeguarding virtual servers, remote apps, cloud workloads, containers, and network interactions across environments. There is also the problem of additional users with varying degrees of security competence but the same capacity to generate and use cloud workloads.

  • Efficiency: Due to the dynamic nature of cloud workloads and containers, in particular, conventional solutions and manual procedures are no longer sufficient. Rapid deployment and scalability imply that the threat surface is always evolving, and security solutions must match the velocity of DevOps without compromising performance.

How does Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) Work?​

A Cloud Workload Protection Platform solution identifies workloads that reside inside the cloud deployments and on-premises infrastructure of a business. Once these workloads have been identified, the solution conducts a vulnerability assessment to find any potentially exploitable security flaws with the workload based on the set security rules and known vulnerabilities.

The CWPP solution should provide the opportunity to deploy security measures in response to the findings of the vulnerability scan. This includes installing allowlists, integrity protection, and other related solutions. In addition to resolving the security concerns uncovered by vulnerability assessments, Cloud Workload Protection Platform solutions should protect cloud and on-premises workloads from typical security threats. This comprises runtime protection, detection and removal of malware, and network segmentation.

What are the Key Capabilities of CWPP?​

It is vital that cloud workload security solutions provide the following features:

  • Simplicity and Effectiveness: Companies must handle the cloud's security needs without expanding the number of products they install and maintain. Idealistically, businesses would use the same platform for their on-premises, public, private, and hybrid cloud requirements in order to deliver uniform, low-impact security without adding complexity.

    With cloud workloads, it is even more vital that a solution protects systems, people, and processes with little performance effect. DevOps necessitates speed, yet delays and inconvenience may result in dangerous behaviors, such as the usage of weak passwords and untrusted pictures.

  • Visibility: If something is not visible, it cannot be detected, stopped, or reacted to. Workload events, such as container events, must be recorded, processed, and stored so that security products and teams have the visibility required to identify and halt threats in real time, as well as hunt and investigate.

  • Runtime Security: Image scanning, although vital, is incapable of detecting threats. Before vulnerabilities can be fixed, they can be exploited. Misconfigurations are possible. Once a virtual machine or container is started, it may be exploited even if the image is properly configured and confirmed. Containers and the hosts on which they operate must be protected by comprehensive runtime security.

What are the Advantages of a Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP)?​

As CWPP solutions are intended to address the security needs of cloud-based and on-premises workloads, they provide a variety of advantages to enterprises that use them to protect applications. The primary benefits of cloud workload protection platforms are as follows:

  • Security: Workloads are distinct from typical on-premises apps, thus their security needs and concerns are unique. Cloud Workload Protection Platform solutions allow an organization to establish customized security controls that give the amount of visibility required by these cloud workloads and protect them from typical security risks in an easy manner.

  • Flexibility: One of the greatest benefits of the cloud is the flexibility to scale up or down resources on demand. CWPPs are cloud-based, allowing enterprises to achieve the same degree of application and workload security flexibility.

  • Agility: Cloud Workload Protection Platform solutions are intended to connect with DevOps CI/CD pipelines, enabling them to be automatically configured to safeguard workload-based applications. This enables developers to incorporate security into DevOps techniques without introducing extra burden.

  • Compliance: Data protection standards require enterprises to employ certain security procedures to secure sensitive data in their hands. CWPP solutions automatically scan for vulnerabilities and compliance violations that put this protected information at risk and install security measures to fulfill compliance standards.

  • Visibility: Due to the diversity of vendor-specific environments they comprise, multi-cloud deployments are challenging to monitor and administer from a visibility standpoint. With CWPP, a company may install a single solution across multiple environments and leverage network segmentation to obtain more insight into its cloud and on-premises infrastructure traffic flows.

  • Cost: Compared to physical hardware in on-premises systems, the cloud's scalability and usage-based invoicing provide considerable cost reductions. As a cloud-based service, CWPP provides comparable cost reductions.

Advantages & Vendors of a Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP)

Figure 1. Advantages & Vendors of a Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP)

What are CWPP Vendors?​

There are a variety of CWPP products that differ based on the security promise they provide and the manner in which they offer it. Several tools are accessible from cloud-based providers. Microsoft's Azure Security Center, for instance, attempts to offer uniform security management across different operating systems, including network-level visibility, configuration review, and threat prevention. Also accessible is Amazon Inspector, which assists with configuration and vulnerability concerns. Some of the most prominent providers of cloud workload protection and their respective platforms are listed below:

  • Trend Micro: Trend Micro Cloud One, a security services platform for cloud builders, provides the largest and most comprehensive cloud security offering in a single package, allowing you to safeguard your cloud infrastructure with clarity and ease. By addressing your cloud projects and aims holistically, Trend Micro Cloud One is able to deliver robust security as you take advantage of the cloud's commercial advantages and efficiency. Trend Micro Cloud One, which is comprised of different services built to suit particular cloud security requirements, gives you the flexibility to address your current difficulties and the innovation to develop your cloud services in the future. You no longer need to identify point products that match the specific needs of your infrastructure or integrate with the procedures you have already deployed. With a complete collection of services tailored for the cloud, Trend Micro Cloud One protects the many components of your environment on a single, streamlined platform. With support for all major cloud platforms and solutions that interface seamlessly with your DevOps processes and toolchain, Trend Micro Cloud One is intended to provide you the flexibility you want without impeding the delivery of your business or applications. With more than 120 evaluations, Trend Micro has an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5 on G2 Grid for Cloud Workload Protection Platforms. And, with more than 500 evaluations, Trend Micro has an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5 on Gartner Peer Insights.

  • VMware Carbon Black App Control: The VMware Carbon Black Cloud is a platform for endpoint security that uses unfiltered data and streaming analytics to prevent, analyze, remediate, and search for threats. With more than 170 evaluations, VMware Carbon Black App Control has an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5 on Gartner Peer Insights.

  • Illumio Core: As the pioneer and industry leader in Zero Trust segmentation, Illumio prevents breaches from becoming cyber catastrophes. Critical applications and precious digital assets are safeguarded by Illumio using segmentation technology designed specifically for the Zero Trust security architecture. Illumio ransomware mitigation and segmentation solutions recognize risk, isolate attacks, and protect data across cloud-native applications, hybrid and multi-clouds, data centers, and endpoints, allowing the world's top enterprises to increase cyber resilience and decrease risk. With more than 90 evaluations, Illumio Core has an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5 on Gartner Peer Insights.

  • Palo Alto Prisma Cloud: Prisma Cloud is a cloud-native security platform that offers continuous visibility, threat prevention, compliance assurance, and data protection across the whole software and infrastructure delivery lifecycle for hybrid and multi-cloud settings. Prisma Cloud utilizes both agent-based and agentless approaches to tap into cloud providers' APIs for read-only access to your network traffic, user activity, and configuration of systems and services and correlates these disparate data sets to assist cloud compliance and security analytics teams in prioritizing risks and responding quickly to issues. In addition, Defenders is used to provide micro-segmentation for workload separation and to protect your host, container, and serverless computing systems from vulnerabilities, malware, and compliance violations. With more than 70 evaluations, Palo Alto Prisma cloud has an overall rating of 4.3 out of 5 on Gartner Peer Insights.

  • Qualys: The integrated approach to IT security and compliance provided by Qualys allows enterprises of any size to accomplish vulnerability management and policy compliance goals cohesively. Qualys enables diverse organizational functions to satisfy your specific objectives. Built upon Qualys' Infrastructure and Core Services, the Qualys Cloud Suite includes the following cloud-based applications: AssetView; Vulnerability Management; Continuous Monitoring; ThreatPROTECT; Policy Compliance; Security Assessment Questionnaire; PCI Compliance; Web Application Scanning; Web Application Firewall; Malware Detection; Web Application Scanning; Web Application Firewall; Malware Detection.

  • Microsoft Defender for Cloud: Azure Security Center offers security management and protection against threats for your hybrid cloud workloads. With enhanced visibility, you can avoid, identify, and react to security risks. With more than 70 evaluations, Microsoft Defender for Cloud has an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5 on Gartner Peer Insights.

  • CloudGuard: CloudGuard Network Security (IaaS) for private and public cloud platforms is intended to safeguard cloud-based assets from the most complex attacks. CloudGuard provides customers with a single pane of glass for managing and securing cloud infrastructures. The tool has dynamic security rules and elastic scalability characteristics. With more than 50 evaluations, CloudGuard for Cloud has an overall rating of 4.4 out of 5 on Gartner Peer Insights.

  • Sysdig Secure: Customers can reliably protect containers, Kubernetes, and cloud services because Sysdig is driving the standard for unified cloud and container security. Sysdig provides real-time visibility at scale to handle risk across containers and various clouds, hence removing security blind spots. Sysdig uses context to prioritize security alerts, allowing your team to concentrate on high-impact security incidents and increase productivity. It reduces resolution time by comprehending the whole source-to-runtime cycle and proposing guided treatment. It enables you to identify and prioritize software vulnerabilities, detect and react to threats and anomalies, and manage cloud setups, permissions, and compliance. From source to run, Sysdig delivers insight across the cloud, containers, and hosts. With more than 50 evaluations, Sysdig Secure has an overall rating of 4.7 out of 5 on Gartner Peer Insights.

  • Orca Security: Orca Security, the innovation leader in cloud security, offers instant-on security and compliance for AWS, Azure, and GCP without the coverage gaps, alert fatigue, or operating expenses of agents or sidecars. Provide your team with superpowers and simplify cloud security operations with a single CNAPP platform for workload and data protection, cloud security posture management, vulnerability management, identity management, and compliance management. Orca Security constructs a graph that spans all cloud assets, software, connection, and trust - then ranks risk depending on the severity of the underlying security problem, its accessibility, and its effect on the organization. This removes tens of thousands of worthless security warnings, allowing you to concentrate on what really important. No code executes in your cloud environment with Orca Security. Orca SideScanningTM scans out-of-band your cloud settings and workloads' runtime block storage, finding vulnerabilities, malware, misconfigurations, lateral movement risk, weak and leaked passwords, and unprotected personally identifiable information. With more than 500 evaluations, Orca Security has an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5 on G2 Grid for Cloud Workload Protection Platforms. And, with more than 40 evaluations, Orca Security has an overall rating of 4.7 out of 5 on Gartner Peer Insights.