12 Best CNAPP Platforms for Better Cloud Security

With cyber threats on the rise, organizations must take proactive measures to secure their cloud environments. This is where a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) can help.

A CNAPP provides a unified solution to monitor, detect and mitigate security risks across an organization‘s cloud estate. By combining capabilities like cloud workload protection, cloud security posture management, identity and access management, and infrastructure as code scanning, a CNAPP strengthens an organization‘s security posture.

According to Gartner, by 2025, 70% of organizations will adopt CNAPPs, up from less than 5% in 2020. This growth underscores the importance of CNAPP in the cloud security tech stack.

But with so many options, how do you select the right CNAPP platform? This comprehensive guide discusses the top 12 CNAPP solutions to help you make an informed decision.

What is CNAPP and Why It Matters?

Before exploring the top CNAPP platforms, let‘s first understand what CNAPP is and why it‘s critical.

CNAPP refers to a unified cloud-native platform that provides end-to-end visibility and security across an organization‘s multi-cloud environments. It combines capabilities like:

• Cloud workload protection (CWPP): Secures workloads across public and hybrid clouds.

• Cloud security posture management (CSPM): Continuously monitors cloud resources for security misconfigurations.

• Identity and access management (IAM): Manages access to cloud resources and defends against compromised accounts.

• Infrastructure as code (IaC) scanning: Scans infrastructure code for security flaws before provisioning cloud resources.

• Container security: Secures containers via runtime protection and scanning of container images.

• API security: Protects APIs from abuse and other threats.

By providing these key capabilities via a single platform, a CNAPP can offer these benefits:

• Unified visibility: Get centralized visibility across multi-cloud environments from a single pane of glass.

• Accelerated response: Quickly detect, investigate and remediate threats across cloud workloads.

• Risk reduction: Minimize risk exposure by fixing misconfigured resources and access policies.

• Automated compliance: Continuously monitor cloud resources for adherence to regulatory standards.

• Shift left security: Find and fix vulnerabilities early in CI/CD pipelines before they reach production.

• Consolidation: Reduce tool sprawl by consolidating point solutions under a single platform.

Without CNAPP, organizations struggle with too many disjointed tools, lack of visibility, and inability to respond quickly to cloud threats. CNAPP solves these challenges by serving as the connective tissue across native cloud security services and third-party solutions.

Top 12 CNAPP Platforms

Now let‘s explore some of the top CNAPP platforms:

1. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Prisma Cloud provides comprehensive CNAPP capabilities for securing cloud workloads and applications throughout the DevOps lifecycle.

Key features include:

• Cloud security posture management
• Cloud workload protection
• Infrastructure as code scanning
• Cloud security analytics
• Container image scanning
• API security
• Compliance monitoring

Prisma Cloud uses advanced analytics and machine learning to detect vulnerabilities, malware, misconfigurations, and anomalous behavior across cloud environments. It also provides extensive compliance reporting mapped to standards such as CIS, NIST, HIPAA and more.

With Prisma Cloud, organizations can take a shift left approach to cloud security by integrating earlier into the DevOps pipeline. This allows vulnerabilities to be caught before reaching production environments.

Palo Alto Networks positions Prisma Cloud as an integrated CNAPP platform that serves as a cloud security nerve center. The solution consolidates and correlates findings across its different modules to reduce false positives and help teams focus on the most critical threats.

2. CrowdStrike Falcon Horizon

CrowdStrike Falcon Horizon provides agentless CNAPP capabilities to secure cloud workloads across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

Key components include:

• Next-gen antivirus and malware prevention
• Host intrusion prevention and firewall management
• Behavioral threat prevention using machine learning
• Vulnerability assessment and prioritization
• Compliance monitoring and reporting

Falcon Horizon allows organizations to get immediate value via its quick 15-minute deployment. It provides out-of-the-box visibility and protection for cloud workloads without requiring lengthy configuration or tuning.

CrowdStrike also offers Expert Services to provide hands-on help with alert monitoring, threat hunting, and incident response. This helps overwhelmed teams better leverage Falcon Horizon to enhance their cloud security posture.

3. Lacework Polygraph

Lacework Polygraph is a CNAPP platform focused on workload security across multi-cloud and container environments.

Key capabilities:

• Behavioral anomaly detection
• Container image scanning
• Host intrusion detection
• Vulnerability assessment
• Compliance monitoring
• Cloud security posture management
• Cloud workload protection

A core differentiator of Lacework is its ability to baseline normal cloud workload behavior and detect anomalous activity that may indicate an attack. This behavior-based approach helps uncover sophisticated threats that signature-based tools may miss.

Lacework automatically discovers workloads across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud environments. It requires no configuration or tuning to get started. The platform ingests massive datasets and leverages machine learning to highlight the most critical threats for investigation.

4. Aqua Cloud Native Security Platform

Aqua CSP provides protection across cloud-native applications, containers, serverless functions and related infrastructure.

Key components:

• Container runtime security
• Serverless security
• Infrastructure as code scanning
• Cloud security posture management
• Container image scanning
• Microsegmentation
• Compliance auditing

Aqua CSP ingests activity data across the cloud application stack and uses machine learning algorithms to detect threats and anomalies. This allows it to pinpoint priority issues among masses of security alerts.

Aqua also provides out-of-the-box compliance controls for standards such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, CIS Benchmarks, and NIST 800-53. This helps organizations enforce policies and achieve continuous compliance monitoring.

With Aqua CSP, organizations get a unified view and control point for securing cloud-native applications from development to production.

5. Sophos Cloud Optix

Sophos Cloud Optix delivers CNAPP capabilities alongside cloud security posture management (CSPM) functionality.

Key features:

• Infrastructure as code scanning
• Cloud security posture monitoring
• Cloud workload protection
• Application vulnerability assessment
• Compliance assessment and reporting

A core strength of Cloud Optix is its broad set of compliance report templates mapped to standards like HIPAA, PCI, CIS and more. This simplifies compliance auditing across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud environments.

For infrastructure as code scanning, Cloud Optix integrates with CI/CD tools such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, and CircleCI to embed security earlier in the development process. Vulnerabilities and misconfigurations can be fixed before provisioning cloud resources.

Sophos provides pre-built integrations with its EDR and network security solutions. This allows Cloud Optix to ingest data from Sophos products already deployed within an organization’s environment.

6. Sysdig Secure

Sysdig Secure delivers CNAPP capabilities focused on securing containers, Kubernetes, and cloud services.

Key features:

• Runtime security for containers
• Kubernetes security posture management
• Vulnerability management
• Compliance checks and reporting
• Anomaly detection using machine learning
• Integrated incident investigation workflow

A differentiated capability provided by Sysdig is the ability to monitor container activity at runtime and detect attempts to exploit vulnerabilities or misconfigurations. This runtime threat detection complements traditional methods like scanning images and configuration analysis.

Sysdig also provides an embedded incident investigation workflow. Analysts can pivot from a threat alert into Sysdig’s forensic tools to understand the scope of compromise and initiate containment.

With Sysdig Secure, organizations get a holistic view of risk across Kubernetes clusters, containers, hosts and cloud provider services.

7. Qualys CloudView

Qualys CloudView provides CNAPP capabilities tightly integrated with the Qualys VMDR vulnerability management platform.

Key features:

• Cloud asset discovery and inventory
• Cloud security posture assessment
• Workload vulnerability management
• Container image scanning
• Web application scanning
• Compliance reporting

A key benefit of CloudView is its bi-directional integration with Qualys VMDR. CloudView continuously assesses cloud assets and feeds data into the VMDR analytics engine. This provides a unified view of vulnerability and misconfiguration risks across on-prem, data center and cloud environments.

Qualys also offers a headless scanner as part of CloudView for embedding security checks within CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure as code tools. This allows organizations to shift security left.

Being part of the broader Qualys Cloud Platform, CloudView can integrate with related Qualys modules for file integrity monitoring, endpoint detection and response, and web application security.

8. Orca Security

Orca Security provides a CNAPP focused on deep visibility across AWS, Azure, and GCP environments.

Key features:

• Asset inventory
• Risk analysis
• Security posture monitoring
• Malware and ransomware detection
• Lateral movement detection
• Suspicious activity alerting
• Compliance reporting

OrcaScan is a differentiated capability that performs non-intrusive inspection of cloud environments without agents. This provides greater visibility into vulnerabilities, malware infections, and runtime threats compared to infrastructure-only approaches.

Orca also provides context-aware correlation of alerts to eliminate noise and help teams focus on actual threats. This reduces false positives plaguing many CNAPP tools relying only on log data.

Orca integrates findings into security operations workflows via SIEM and ticketing system integrations. Teams can pivot from Orca to take response actions.

9. Ermetic

Ermetic provides an identity-first approach to CNAPP focused on detecting and mitigating overprivileged access across cloud environments.

Key features:

• Identity threat detection and response
• Privileged access management
• Access risk analysis and remediation
• Infrastructure entitlement management
• Self-service access request portal
• Compliance reporting

Ermetic performs deep analysis of human and machine identities including roles, entitlements, and permissions. It detects potential abuse of excessive privileges and provides policies to remediate risky access.

This identity-centric approach allows Ermetic to identify insider threats and lateral movement that tools focused on network and endpoints may miss.

Ermetic integrates with ticketing systems to automatically create incidents when threats are detected. Bulk actions can be taken to remove excessive permissions and minimize attack surface.

10. Alcide kAudit

Alcide kAudit focuses on providing visibility into Kubernetes environment security posture and runtime activity.

Key capabilities:

• Kubernetes configuration scanning
• Network segmentation policies
• Runtime threat detection
• Detection of compromised accounts
• Vulnerability scanning
• Compliance auditing and reporting

A unique capability of kAudit is Kubernetes Forensics – the ability to continuously capture and index Kubernetes control plane activity at runtime. This allows querying and investigation into historical events to understand the root cause of threats.

kAudit helps enforce network microsegmentation policies between Kubernetes clusters and namespaces. This reduces lateral movement in the event of a compromise.

Alcide’s tools integrate into CI/CD pipelines for DevSecOps. Kubernetes configuration and security issues can be caught early before deployment.

11. StackRox

StackRox delivers a CNAPP focused on Kubernetes visibility, threat detection, and compliance across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Key features:

• Kubernetes configuration scanning
• Runtime activity monitoring
• Vulnerability management
• Network segmentation
• Compliance reporting and enforcement
• CI/CD integration

StackRox provides declarative policies to enforce security controls across Kubernetes namespaces, clusters, and environments. This allows standardized security policies irrespective of where applications are deployed.

With StackRox, anomaly detection at runtime goes beyond analyzing network traffic and also examines Kubernetes audit logs and events for signs of compromise. This provides richer insights compared to network-only detection.

StackRox integrates with Kubernetes admission controllers to block risky or non-compliant resources pre-deployment based on configured security policies. This shifts security left.

12. CyCognito

CyCognito provides a CNAPP platform focused on external attack surface management and shadow IT discovery across cloud environments.

Key capabilities:

• Asset inventory
• Unauthorized asset detection
• Visibility into externally accessible assets
• Vulnerability assessment
• Risk prioritization

CyCognito performs black box scanning of cloud environments from outside-in to create an inventory of externally accessible resources and IT assets. This identifies shadow IT and rogue applications that may exist unseen by security teams.

Discovered assets are continuously assessed for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that attackers could exploit. Cyber exposure metrics help quantify risk and prioritize remediation based on potential business impact.

CyCognito integrates with service ticketing systems to streamline remediation. This allows security teams to rapidly reduce their public-facing attack surface across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Key Capabilities to Look For in a CNAPP

As you evaluate CNAPP solutions, make sure to look for these key capabilities:

• Unified console – Centralized management and data across different CNAPP modules.

• Quick time-to-value – Frictionless deployment and auto-discovery of cloud environments.

• Risk-based insights – Quantified risk scoring tailored to your industry and business context.

• Automated remediation – Ability to take bulk actions to fix issues across cloud resources.

• No proprietary agents – Agentless technology for non-intrusive data collection.

• CI/CD integrations – Baked-in integration with DevOps tools and pipelines.

• Open API and integrations – Flexibility to integrate surrounding security stack.

• Custom compliance reporting – Tailored reporting across relevant industry regulations.

• Cloud platform support – Broad coverage across leading public and hybrid clouds.

Conclusion

As organizations continue their cloud migration, adopting a cloud-native application protection platform is critical to securing cloud data and workloads. CNAPP provides unified visibility, advanced threat detection, and simplified compliance across cloud environments.

This guide provided an overview of the leading CNAPP solutions available in the market today. While individual capabilities differ across vendors, selecting a solution that aligns with your organization‘s cloud security requirements will enable you to reduce risk, improve compliance, and enable innovation.