Nowadays, the security service market is flush with a lot of vendor classifications currently available. People are not so familiar with it and might think about what are they. And what are the advantages of it are and working and compliance needs or desired outcomes? Today, in this blog we will know about CWPP or Cloud Workload Protection Platforms. what value they have to the company or organization, what they are, and what is the role of it in the security service space.

Gartner gives the definition of cloud Workload Protection Platform as. “The demand for CWPPs or Cloud Workload Protection Platforms is determined by workload-centric security protection solutions. Which are generally based on agents. They manage the unique requirements of server workload protection in current hybrid data center infrastructure that spans on-premises, physical, and virtual machines (VMs), and multiple public cloud IaaS (infrastructure as a service) environments. Ideally, they also support container-based application architectures.” It contains the storage, computing, and networking capabilities required by applications in the cloud.

This type of cloud workload needs unique security needs that are different from traditional IT systems. And, CWPPs offer security tailored to the needs of workloads deployed in private or public, or hybrid cloud infrastructure. The goal of Cloud Workload Protection Platforms is to keep cloud-based applications secure. By giving the security for the app and all of the related or connected cloud capabilities. The word Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) shows the process of preserving the workloads. That is been shared with different cloud environments securely. So, it is just that the entire workload is functional for any type of cloud-based apps without adding any threat or security risks. It is important for a company or organization to understand CWPP well and use it effectively for better business progress.

Importance of Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP)

The company can take full benefit of cloud technology if and only if they build applications that use its full capabilities. The method of transforming legacy technology to cloud-based applications is not automatic. The company can not just copy and paste an application from old legacy technology to cloud technology. It is not that easy part. It uses a shift left method for cloud adoption. Where applications run on-premises are just copied to the cloud. However, this results in low performance and expensive cloud adoption.

As developer uses CWPP as part of DevOps development cycles. Applications deploy and build quickly with little security and risk. Moreover, at the same time, these apps are often public-facing and deploy using multiple cloud infrastructures. But it makes it difficult to monitor and secure cloud applications. CWPP offers a low-friction solution for implementing cloud security and scalability. Here are some points that show why CWPP is important:

• Nowadays, application developers use code from different plateforms like GitHub. And uses workloads to make an application and publish it to their target cutomer or consumers. So, This method is konwn as DevOps (Development Operations) and it is cycle of CI/CD (continuous innovation and continuous development). Where they can give quick response to customers and improve the response and experience of their customers and works in less amount of time.
• Most organizations have old legacy business structure and applications that do not allow them to complete movment of functionality to the cloud technology.
• The reason of security is no longer strict gate for application production is tradeoff of the process for improvment and increase speed of application. However, in current time security experts are not able to apply controls at app run time as they do it in past time.

How does CWPP work?

A CWPP solution discovers workloads that exist within a company’s on-premises infrastructure and cloud-based deployment. After discovering this workload, the solution will perform an openness test to find any potentially exploitable security threat or risk with cloud workload following security policies and known vulnerabilities. The company should be able to manage any unmanaged workloads that discover by works or anyone.

After the result of the scan, CWPP provides the option to execute security controls to fix the identified issues or security threats. This can be integrity protection or implementing allowlists. However, from a security perspective anti-malware protection is less important or critical. Anti-malware may be tightly coupled to the rules that control the market or industry that may be required. Below are some other concerns.

Incorporate into the CI/CD pipeline

Workload protections can not always apply at run time. As it is a generally invisible and natural body of cloud application development. By changing the security additional to the left of the application process. So, it increases its effectiveness and ubiquity.

Align with CSPM Solutions

CWPP should be an ideal part of the solution or tightly aligned with the solution as CSPM ( Cloud Security Posture Management ). Where CWPP sets the workloads and provides the means of securing them. CSPM is made to do the same for the cloud accounts in which those workloads are deployed. These two solutions are very unnaturally fir together. So they should be part of the same customer experience.

Link CWPP solution to infrastructure

Cloud Workload Protection Platform solution should be easily attached to the rest of the security infrastructure. However, CWPP focuses more on protecting workloads that run apps. But, DLP (Data Loss Prevention) give more priority to protecting the data that application store and use. Moreover, from another side, SOC (Security Operations Center) can greatly increase its sight of the complex attacks if it can detect ones that originate from or extend themselves into the cloud. And until the SOC can remediate and detect or find cloud-native threats and vulnerabilities. So, Investigators will be partially blind to certain types of attacks.

Moreover, To address the security issues identified in vulnerability assessments, CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platform) solutions should also provide protection against general security risks and threats to workload and on-premises cloud infrastructure. However, This contains malware detection, remediation, network segmentation, and runtime protection.

Some of the stuff CWPPs offer:

• Traffic visibility
• Netwrok segmentation and firewalling
• Vulnerability management and workload configuration
• Application control
• Anti-malware scanning
• Log monitoring and management
• Workload behavior monitoring, essentially endpoint detect and response for servers. Also known as host based intrusion detection system (HIDS)
• System integrity measurement, attestation, and monitoring

Advantages of Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP)

CWPP offers a solution for addressing the unique characteristics of Zero Trust security for cloud workloads, which possess:

• Security: In development process or at run-time
• Workloads: VM, Server, container and serverless, in the cloud or on-premise, non-persistent or persistent
• Visibility and Discoverability: Able to find and manage workload in multi-cloud or hubrid cloud architechture
• Multi-cloud infrastructure: Use of more than one cloud service provide
• Hubrid-cloud infrastructure: Moving from on-premise to cloud

The main goal of CWPP solutions is the security need of cloud-based applications and on-prem workloads. It offers many benefits to companies, businesses, and organizations. The implementation of the Importance of Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) provides the below advantages.

Agility

CWPP ( Cloud Workload Protection Platform ) solutions are made to integrate into DevOps CI/CD pipelines. Moreover, Allows them to automatically configure and make settings for secure cloud apps developed using workloads. CWPP also allows developers and IT teams to integrate security into application practices without adding unnecessary overload.

Consistency

CWPP gives consistency to business infrastructure. As it is relevant to cloud deployment to the architecture of the company. A reduction in visibility over the long term occurs because microservices infrastructure decreases the lifetime of each workload. The implementation of CWPP allows consistent view without limitation on the location or numbers of the workloads.

Security

As this workload is different from the traditional on-premises infrastructure they also have their unique security need, concerns, and requirements. The CWPP solutions enable businesses to easily deploy customized security controls that offer a level of visibility. That these cloud workloads require and rescue them against general security risks and threats.

Cost

Cloud offers a pay-as-you-use service and billing options. Cloud solution flexibility and billing based on usage allow significant cost saving compared to the old way or physical appliances of on-premises infrastructure. Same as a cloud solution, CWPP also offers the same level of cost savings.

Reduce Complexity

As the Cloud Workload Protection Platform focuses on security for cloud-native architecture. It offers a simpler and lesser cost method compared with legacy tools. As a policy, CWPP technology offers the security as expected even when running in the VM or a container where organizations do not control the lower levels of the tech stacks.

Compliance

Data protection laws require that companies execute certain security commands to properly guard the user data, resources, and sensitive information of their business. And as already said CWPP solution automatically scans for compliance violations and vulnerabilities. So, this protects data at risk and implements the security commands to get compliance that is in requirement.

Flexibility

Cloud also offers flexibility as a benefit. It is the ability of the cloud to scale resources up and down on the on-time demand of applications. So, CWPPs are cloud-based. So, it offers businesses the same level of flexibility as cloud infrastructure regard to workload and application security.