What is cloud native security?
Cloud native security is an approach that ensures security throughout a cloud native application’s distinct life cycle, from infrastructure planning to client delivery and maintenance.
The cloud lets teams spin up an environment and go—but this flexibility urgently requires a security model that’s as flexible and elastic as the cloud itself. As a result, you’ll want to deploy and maintain security quickly in this new cloud model.
A cloud native security strategy helps you plug into your architecture based on elastic cloud services and an agility framework while maintaining cloud security services, a security posture, and the ability to respond to and handle threats in real time. Cloud native security products also provide immediate security as you work in the cloud.
Take the Cloud Security Self-Assessment
Get a quick gauge of cloudsec posture to assess your security posture across 9 focus areas and see where you can do better.
Begin Assessment
The 4 C’s of cloud native security
In cloud native security, the 4 C’s provide a framework for understanding and tackling potential vulnerabilities. These four layers represent the fundamental elements of a cloud native application that require comprehensive security measures:
Code: This refers to your application’s source code. Key concerns include insecure coding practices, unpatched library vulnerabilities, and a lack of proper access control mechanisms. You can use static code analysis, vulnerability scanning, and secure coding practices to address these issues.
Container: Containers package your application’s code and dependencies—but they can also harbor security risks. Unnecessary privileges, insecure container images, and misconfigurations pose threats to containers. To counter these issues, use container scanning, minimal permissions, and trusted image registries.
Cluster: The Kubernetes infrastructure that manages your containers forms the cluster layer. Misconfigured network policies, inadequate access control, and insecure communication channels can leave clusters vulnerable. To protect this layer, enforce secure policies, least privilege principles, and encrypted communication protocols.
Cloud: This layer encompasses the underlying cloud infrastructure. To protect it, implement shared responsibility models (which require the secure cloud resource configuration), identity and access management (IAM), and robust security controls from the cloud provider.
Understanding this security model shifts how you approach securing your development environment while exposing where to focus your efforts. Knowing the 4 C’s also allows you to carve out security focus areas, which begins with understanding the benefits and foundations of cloud native security.
The modern cloud security operating model is not a static state, but rather a continuous journey of improvement. This journey involves:
→ Gaining visibility into your cloud environment → Identifying and remediating critical risks → Adopting best practices to continuously improve overall security posture → Shifting left to focus on preventing issues from even entering the production environment
The benefits of cloud native security
Cloud native security offers strengths like enhanced IAM and robust network security controls, which are crucial for adapting to modern IT ecosystems’ fluid and complex landscapes.
Here are some other benefits it offers:
1. Enhanced security posture
These are the key components of an improved security posture:
Reduced attack surface: Containerization and microservices architecture contract the exploitable surface area, minimizing entry points for attackers and reducing breach risks.
Proactive vulnerability detection: Continuous security monitoring and automated scanning tools enable preemptive identification and remediation of weaknesses to mitigate threats before exploitation occurs.
Improved incident response: Real-time monitoring and automated response workflows facilitate the rapid incident detection and containment, which minimizes damage and accelerates threat responses.
Strengthened identity management: Granular control over access permissions across all application layers fosters robust IAM and reduces the risk of unauthorized access.
2. Increased agility and efficiency
Here are a few ways that cloud native security improves flexibility and efficiency:
Streamlined deployments: Integrating automated security processes with DevOps workflows enables faster, more frequent deployments without compromising security.
Enhanced scalability: Security solutions scale alongside applications to ensure robust security without manual adjustments, regardless of growth.
Reduced operational overhead: Automating routine security tasks frees security team resources for strategic initiatives like threat hunting.
Improved collaboration: DevSecOps practices break down silos between development and security teams and foster shared responsibility for application security.
3. Enhanced compliance and risk management
The following are key components of compliance and emerging threats:
Simplified compliance: Cloud native security tools and practices align with industry regulations and data privacy requirements to streamline compliance efforts.
Reduced risk exposure: Proactive vulnerability mitigation and robust access controls minimize security incident risk and potential impact.
Improved transparency: Continuous monitoring and comprehensive logging provide granular audit trails, which enhance transparency and facilitate investigations.
Streamlined data protection: Encryption and other data security measures safeguard sensitive information throughout its lifecycle.
The challenges of adopting cloud native security
Below is an overview of the key challenges that come with improving your cloud native security:
| Challenge | Description |
|---|---|
| Shifting mindsets | Traditional security approaches struggle with dynamic, ephemeral cloud native environments. As a result, teams must move from static controls to continuous, automated security processes when integrating DevOps workflows. |
| Shared responsibility model | Cloud providers offer security features, but organizations must also understand their responsibilities and actively configure and manage security for cloud resources. |
| Tool sprawl | The explosion of cloud native technologies creates numerous security tools from different vendors. Because of this, integration and management can be complex and may cause operational overhead and potential coverage gaps. |
| Visibility and monitoring | Cloud native environments’ dynamic nature complicates maintaining complete visibility into activities and threats. As a result, traditional tools may not be suitable for monitoring microservices and containerized applications. |
| Misconfigurations and vulnerabilities | Frequent deployments and rapid scaling can easily introduce misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. For this reason, quick detection and remediation are essential. |
| Shifting threat landscape | Cloud native environments introduce new attack vectors, so security teams must stay up-to-date on the latest threats and adapt their defenses accordingly. |
The Ultimate Cloud Security Buyer's Guide
Everything you need to know when evaluating cloud security solutions.
Download Guide
The anatomy of cloud native security threats
Cloud native environments face unique threats—especially since new threats emerge every day. Below is an overview of these threats, based on the 4 C’s:
| Layer | Threat |
|---|---|
| Code | Attackers can exploit these vulnerabilities if you use insecure dependencies, such as unpatched third-party libraries. Poor input validation can also lead to injection attacks like SQLi, while hardcoded secrets may expose credentials in repositories. |
| Container | Malicious images from untrusted sources can compromise software within your environment. Because of these vulnerabilities, excessive container privileges and unmonitored runtime activity could enable lateral movement and cryptojacking. |
| Cluster | Misconfigured network policies can lead to vulnerabilities like unauthorized pod-to-pod communication and growing attack surfaces. To gain deeper access, attackers could leverage weak role-based access control settings or Kubernetes. |
| Cloud | Misconfigured storage (like public S3 buckets) can expose sensitive data. If there are overprivileged IAM roles and cloud provider vulnerabilities like virtual machine (VM) escape attacks, attackers can gain access to or compromise your infrastructure. |
This threat anatomy also involves these additional emerging threats:
Ephemeral asset blind spots: These are short-lived containers or serverless functions that your team isn’t monitoring.
Supply chain attacks: These occur when there’s a compromise within your CI/CD pipeline or artifacts.
API vulnerabilities: These occur when there’s weak authentication within your microservices, like API gateway flaws.
The advantages of choosing modern security over legacy tools
When you look for a solution that provides future-forward security for the cloud, you can expect key advantages. Below are those benefits, using Wiz as an example:
Agentless architecture
Wiz operates through APIs instead of resource-intensive agents to offer these benefits:
Faster deployments: No agents to install means rapid setup and seamless scaling across diverse environments.
Reduced overhead: Teams can benefit from minimal impact on system performance without dedicated agent resources.
Complete visibility: There are no blind spots since Wiz scans all resources—including VMs, serverless functions, and containers—directly using native APIs.
Graph-based risk prioritization
Wiz maps connections between resources and vulnerabilities to allow for the following:
Contextual assessment: Wiz analyzes vulnerabilities’ potential impact after considering your specific environment.
Ruthless prioritization: Focusing on critical risks first prevents alert fatigue from low-priority issues.
Actionable insights: Wiz’s graph provides detailed context for each risk to guide remediation efforts.
Holistic security coverage
Wiz offers comprehensive security beyond traditional vulnerability management to prevent these issues:
Misconfigurations: Wiz detects and remediates insecure configurations across cloud resources.
Secrets exposure: It also identifies and protects sensitive data like access keys and passwords.
IAM: Wiz analyzes IAM controls to ensure appropriate privileges and prevent unauthorized access.
Compliance: The platform helps you comply with various security regulations and best practices.
Integration with development workflow
Wiz integrates seamlessly with CI/CD pipelines to allow for the following:
Shift-left security: Security checks are present early in development to prevent vulnerabilities from reaching production.
DevSecOps collaboration: Developers and security teams can work together effectively for a more secure development culture
While there are many types of risks within the threat landscape, there’s a solution to minimize the vulnerabilities in your environment. Instead of using multiple tools and missing blind spots as a result, you can choose a unified cloud native application protection platform (CNAPP).
CNAPPs: Choosing Wiz for a unified cloud security solution
CNAPPs are end-to-end cloud native security solutions that combine key functionalities like posture management, workload protection, runtime protection, standard and compliance implementation, and data security. The right CNAPP can help you unify security and more efficiently catch emerging threats using automation, agentless scanning, and the latest technology.
Unlike most legacy tools that adopt traditional cloud security later on, CNAPP providers build their tools for the cloud from the start. CNAPPs like Wiz also offer unified security to protect your organization from modern and emerging threats.
Wiz uses the four C’s of cloud native security to provide visibility into your entire cloud infrastructure. The platform also gives you actionable insights and prioritized recommendations to help you spot and remediate risks.
Using cloud native technology, Wiz provides the latest, most advanced tools to secure your data, both at rest and in transit. That’s why over 50% of Fortune 100 companies trust Wiz for their cloud security.
Learn more about your cloud security health today by downloading the free Ultimate Guide for Evaluating Cloud Security Solutions.
One Cloud Native Security Command Center
Learn why CISOs at the fastest growing organizations trust Wiz to secure their cloud environments.
