Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP)
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP)
Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) is a unified cloud security and compliance solution designed to protect cloud native applications from code to cloud. It enables security teams to monitor, detect, and remediate vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that could lead to data exposure, service disruption, or compromise.
As organizations move more workloads to public cloud platforms, the attack surface expands in ways that traditional, perimeter-based security tools cannot adequately cover. Cloud infrastructure, containers, serverless functions, and APIs introduce additional entry points that adversaries can attempt to exploit.
Protecting an organization against modern cloud attacks requires a clear understanding of the foundational technologies that support cloud security. A key building block in this space is CNAPP.
What is CNAPP ?
CNAPP consolidates several cloud security capabilities into a single, integrated platform. Instead of operating multiple tools with partial visibility and separate data sets, security, DevOps, and development teams work from a shared view of risk.
A typical CNAPP solution combines capabilities such as:
- Cloud security posture management (CSPM)
- Cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM)
- Cloud workload protection platform (CWPP)
- Identity and access management (IAM) insights
- Data protection and governance
By combining these capabilities into one platform, CNAPP promotes consistent cloud risk management and more effective collaboration across teams.
Why CNAPP matters?
Cloud and hybrid environments introduce a large, dynamic attack surface. Traditional security tools were designed for on premises data centers, servers, and local networks, where infrastructure and trust boundaries change more slowly.
Many organizations still handle cloud incidents in a reactive manner, treating each event as an isolated issue rather than part of a broader security posture. CNAPP supports a more proactive, lifecycle-based approach.
Key reasons CNAPP is important include:
- Application protection across the lifecycle
CNAPP extends protection across the entire application lifecycle, from development and CI/CD pipelines through staging and production. Security checks are applied early and repeatedly, reducing the likelihood that vulnerabilities and misconfigurations reach live environments. - Compliance visibility and control
CNAPP provides insight into risks, misconfigurations, and policy violations that affect regulatory and internal requirements such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and organizational standards. It helps identify issues such as sensitive data exposure or unsafe access paths and supports systematic remediation. - Improved collaboration and operational efficiency
By consolidating multiple security functions into one platform, CNAPP simplifies workflows for security, DevOps, and development teams. Stakeholders work from a shared dashboard, use consistent findings, and coordinate remediation without managing several unconnected tools.
Core components of a CNAPP
A cloud native application protection platform brings together several key capabilities. The sections below describe the major components and their roles.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is both a practice and a category of tools that focus on cloud configuration and posture.
CSPM solutions are designed to:
- Discover cloud assets and configurations across accounts, regions, and services
- Detect misconfigurations that may lead to incidents, such as publicly accessible storage or overly permissive security groups
- Provide guided remediation steps to reduce the likelihood of ransomware, data leaks, and lateral movement
Two important aspects of CSPM are:
- Infrastructure as Code scanning
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) templates, such as Terraform and AWS CloudFormation, define the structure and configuration of cloud environments. IaC scanning examines these templates for security risks and deviations from best practices before resources are deployed. This supports early identification of issues, alignment with standards, and reduced manual review. - Compliance and governance
CSPM helps enforce compliance policies across cloud resources and services. It generates real time alerts for non compliant configurations, provides context for each issue, and guides teams through remediation. Over time, this strengthens the overall cloud security posture and supports audit readiness.
Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM)
Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) focuses on identities and privileges in the cloud.
CIEM allows organizations to:
- Discover which identities, roles, and services have access to specific cloud resources
- Detect overly permissive roles and unused or orphaned access rights
- Monitor how permissions are used in practice
By mapping identities to permissions and actual activity, CIEM reduces the risk of privilege misuse, whether accidental or malicious. It offers a central view of access across accounts and applications and helps enforce least privilege so that users and services receive only the access they require.
Cloud Workload Protection Platform
A Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) focuses on securing workloads regardless of where or how they run.
A CWPP typically covers:
- Virtual machines (VMs)
- Containers and Kubernetes clusters
- Serverless functions
- Databases and other cloud services
CWPP solutions:
- Apply security controls and policies to workloads
- Monitor network activity and runtime behavior
- Detect suspicious activity and known attack techniques
- Support compliance with internal controls and external standards
In practical terms, CWPP helps reduce workload-related risk while allowing business operations to continue with minimal disruption.
Data protection
Data protection within CNAPP is concerned with safeguarding sensitive information stored or processed in the cloud.
Key data protection functions include:
- Data discovery and classification
Identification of sensitive data across storage services, databases, and applications. Classification helps determine appropriate protection controls and access restrictions. - Encryption and key management
Protection of data at rest and in transit using strong cryptography, supported by appropriate key handling practices. Even if data is accessed without authorization, it cannot be read without the correct keys. - Access control and auditing
Restriction of data access based on roles, policies, and least privilege principles, along with detailed logging and auditing for investigations and reporting.
Collectively, these capabilities reduce the impact of potential breaches and lower the likelihood of accidental exposure.
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Identity and Access Management (IAM) in the cloud manages user and service identities, authentication, and authorization. It is closely related to CIEM but focuses more broadly on how entities prove identity and gain access.
CNAPP platforms use IAM information to:
- Monitor IAM roles, policies, and trust relationships across accounts
- Detect overly broad permissions and risky combinations of privileges
- Recommend safer alternatives and support least privilege models
Cloud data protection and IAM are closely connected. IAM governs identity and access, while data protection focuses on the information itself. CNAPP brings these dimensions together to provide a clearer view of identity-related risk.
How CNAPP works in practice
A CNAPP solution brings these components together and uses shared data and analytics to create a continuous security loop.
Typical CNAPP workflow:
- Data ingestion
CNAPP collects data from:- Cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
- Infrastructure components, including VMs, containers, and network devices
- Applications, both custom and third party
- Existing security tools, such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems
- Data analysis
The platform normalizes and correlates this data to identify:- Vulnerabilities in cloud resources and workloads
- Misconfigurations against best practices and standards
- Anomalous behavior that may indicate an attack or misuse
- Threat detection
CNAPP uses rules, heuristics, and machine learning to detect threats in near real time, such as:- Ransomware activity
- Unauthorized access to sensitive data
- Deviations from known good configurations
- Incident response
When a threat or critical issue is found, CNAPP can:- Block or contain malicious activity
- Trigger automated remediation, such as applying patches or changing configurations
- Alert the right stakeholders, including security, DevOps, and application owners
- Continuous monitoring
CNAPP continuously monitors for new risks as environments change. New accounts, services, or deployments are brought under coverage, and security findings are updated accordingly.
This continuous cycle helps keep cloud security measures effective as environments grow and change.
CNAPP X DevSecOps
CNAPP fits naturally into a DevSecOps approach, where security is shared across the software development lifecycle.
A strong CNAPP platform:
- Integrates with IDEs, CI pipelines, and issue trackers
- Provides feedback to developers inside their existing tools
- Embeds policies and checks into build and deployment workflows
Security teams define policies and guardrails. Developers receive clear, actionable findings early in the process. DevOps teams keep the pipelines running smoothly while enforcing those policies. As a result, security becomes a built in part of how software is delivered, not a separate stage at the end.
Midway through this journey, CNAPP becomes more than a product name. CNAPP turns into a way of working where cloud risk is visible, shared, and addressed throughout development and operations.
Saner Cloud as your CNAPP platform
Saner Cloud unifies vulnerability management, compliance, and remediation in one CNAPP platform built for multicloud scale. Instead of maintaining separate tools for CSPM, workload security, and compliance reporting, your teams can use Saner Cloud as a single place to see risk and respond.
With Saner Cloud CNAPP, you can:
- Continuously assess cloud configurations and workloads for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations
- Monitor permissions and identity based risk across accounts
- Map findings to regulatory and internal compliance requirements
- Integrate security checks into development and deployment workflows
If you are looking to simplify and strengthen your cloud security, a guided look at Saner Cloud CNAPP can help show how these capabilities work together on real environments.