Defending Your Cloud Workload

The Essential Features of a Comprehensive Cloud Workload Protection Platform

As organizations transformed their nature from being reliant on on-prem data centers to cloud-based applications, ensuring their security has become increasingly important. A Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) is a security technology explicitly designed to detect and mitigate security threats within these applications. CWPPs offer automated monitoring and security features that cover a broad range of cloud-based workloads, such as virtual machines, containers and serverless functions. With these security controls, organizations can safeguard their cloud-based applications from a variety of threats, including malware, unauthorized access and data breaches.

In our previous blog, we provided an overview of the Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) offered by Prisma Cloud. Now, let’s take a closer look at some of its key features! These features enable organizations to monitor and secure their cloud environments more effectively, detect and respond to threats in real time and ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations.

Features of Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP)

1. Vulnerability Management 
2. Compliance
3. CI/CD Security
4. Runtime defense
5. Container access control
6. Image Analysis Sandbox
7. Trusted Images
8. Flexible control

1. Vulnerability Management: 

Prisma Cloud offers a comprehensive view of vulnerabilities across the application lifecycle, helping organizations prioritize risks in real-time across public, private and on-premises environments. With a single UI, users can manage risk, prioritize vulnerabilities across host OS, container images and serverless functions and view every CVE with details and up-to-date vendor fix information. The tool also allows users to set precise policies to alert on or prevent vulnerable components from running on their environments, continuously monitor container registries and integrate vulnerability alerts into common endpoints such as JIRA, Slack and ServiceNow. By integrating security into their CI/CD pipelines and existing systems, organizations can better secure their cloud-native applications.

2. Compliance:

Ensuring compliance for dynamic and ephemeral infrastructures of cloud-native applications requires purpose-built controls. Prisma Cloud provides real-time and historical views into compliance status for hosts, containers plus serverless functions. It covers leading frameworks such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR and NIST SP 800-190 with pre-built compliance templates. Users can leverage CIS Benchmarks to implement or customize checks with approved coverage for AWS, Docker, Kubernetes and Linux CIS Benchmarks. Trusted images can be used to ensure that application components only originate from authorized sources and compliance checks can be added to the full application lifecycle to alert on or prevent misconfigurations from reaching production. Prisma Cloud offers a single dashboard that centrally monitors compliance posture and covers Kubernetes and Istio, providing a comprehensive solution to achieve compliance for cloud-native applications.

3. CI/CD Security:

To ensure the security of cloud-native applications, a holistic approach is necessary that incorporates security measures throughout the application lifecycle, beginning with vulnerability scanning and hardening checks integrated within the CI/CD workflow. Prisma Cloud offers support for all application components, including Git repositories, container images, AMIs and serverless functions. It can integrate with various CI solutions such as Jenkins, CircleCI and AWS CodeBuild. By utilizing centralized dashboards, users can assess as well as prioritize risk, monitor vulnerability information and compliance results. Furthermore, the tool can  access vendor fix information across the build, deploy and run phases. Prisma Cloud further reinforces security by displaying scan results within developer tooling and enforcing security policies that restrict the movement of vulnerable builds through the pipeline. As a result, Prisma Cloud delivers centralized policies throughout the entire application lifecycle.

4. Runtime defense:

Cloud-native applications require modern, automated protection to prevent unwanted activity and threats. This is where runtime defense comes in. With a single agent, you can secure Linux and Windows hosts, containers and Kubernetes, along with emerging technologies like PaaS and serverless. You can automate baseline policies across process, file system and network activity plus capture detailed forensics of every audit or security incident. Additionally, runtime policies can be managed from a centralized console to ensure security is present in every deployment and context-rich data can be mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework to eliminate challenges for SOC teams in identifying and tracking threats.

5. Container access control:

Modern applications require comprehensive security measures that protect the entire application stack. Prisma Cloud offers integrated security for cloud native architectures, allowing organizations to manage Docker activities and configurations as well as secrets for containers. The platform captures Kubernetes audits and provides rules to identify events to alert on. With Rego policy language, users can secure deployments and all audit alerts plus activities can be viewed in a single dashboard for analysis. By leveraging Prisma Cloud, companies can ensure their environment runs smoothly and their data remains secure.

6. Image Analysis Sandbox:

The Image Analysis Sandbox is a tool designed to safely run container images that may contain outdated or vulnerable packages and embedded malware from external repositories. This allows for risks to be exposed and suspicious dependencies to be identified that may have otherwise been missed by static analysis. The tool captures a detailed runtime profile of the container by collecting processes, networking and file system events that occurred while the container was running. Additionally, the tool can scan for suspicious and anomalous container behavior such as malware, crypto miners, port scanning, or modified binary or Kernel module modification. The Image Analysis Sandbox can be integrated into CI/CD workflows to shift container security left.

7. Trusted Images:

Pulling container images from external repositories can expose your organization to security risks. Outdated, vulnerable packages and malware can be embedded within these images. To mitigate these risks, it is essential to use trusted images as a security control. This control enables you to define which registries, repositories and images are trustworthy and how to respond when untrusted images are started in your environment. Trusted images can be established by the point of origin or base layer and their use can be monitored to ensure that only permitted images are running.

8. Flexible control

To effectively protect constantly evolving cloud workloads and applications, organizations need agile and integrated controls. Prisma Cloud offers a flexible approach to security, with options for both agentless and agent-based protections. Agentless scanning provides easy visibility into risks, while agent-based protection offers deep forensic insight and preventative policies. With a unified dashboard and policy engine, both approaches can be managed from a single location, providing a comprehensive solution for cloud security needs.

Now, Let’s talk about how you implement and manage CWPP in Prisma – And here’s where Technosprout comes in…

Learn more about Technosprout Systems Pvt. Ltd. to Asses, Design, Implement and Manage your Cloud Security Posture. Visit Technosprout to know how we help you secure your assets once you have set foot in the cloud journey and have selected your cloud partner.
On adopting services from Technosprout, the enterprise collaborates with our skilled and trusted workforce led by our service head, who acts as an ongoing consultant to support the enterprise’s adoption of the preferred solution. 

Are you ready to take the right step towards security? Let’s start by filling a free Prisma Cloud Assessment Form or just ‘Request a Demo on our website