What is Cloud Workload Protection?

Businesses nowadays use both private and public clouds for their business operation, and workloads associated with them are constantly at risk of attack. As the company grows, so does the attack surface expand accordingly, leading to an increasing number of vulnerabilities. 

Importantly, attackers are constantly looking for ways to exploit cloud workloads and utilize them for illicit means. So, what can you do to protect your cloud workload in the modern world where attackers are coming up with sophisticated attacks? 

You can utilize cloud workload protection, which has emerged as the fundamental way to secure and manage workloads in the cloud from a variety of security threats. Today, we are going to help you understand what cloud workload protection is and how it can be useful for your organization.

What is Cloud Workload Protection (CWP)?

Cloud workload protection serves as a continuous process that helps organization protect their cloud workloads present in databases, VMs and physical servers while they move between cloud environments. Cloud workload protection is often considered an extension of cloud security controls as it helps in monitoring and mitigating vulnerabilities.

For a cloud-based application to function smoothly, you will have to keep the entire workload free from any security risk. Even though it is a continuous monitoring and threat mitigation process, it is quite different from traditional application security.

It monitors communication between applications and services rather than focusing on traditional traffic. In general, CWP not only helps you identify, secure, and manage cloud workloads but also improves overall compliance by reducing risk surface. This process usually involves two different methodologies: bare-metal hypervisors and microsegmentation. 

What micro-segmentation does is that it segregates the data center into different security segments and then implements security protocols for each segment. However, a bare-metal hypervisor creates multiple isolated VMs for the hardware, and when a particular VM is compromised, it won’t be able to spread to the workloads.

Why is Cloud Workload Protection Important?

Cloud workload protection is an important aspect for every organization operating in the cloud as it helps in protecting the workload. By securing the workloads, CWP enables the organization to build and run cloud-native applications with ease and speed. 

Besides the application, a cloud workload contains all the processing data, network resources, and involved processes that enable communication between the user and the application. So, it becomes essential to protect the workload through cloud workload protection, as an attack on any component will jeopardize the whole working of the application. 

When cloud workloads are passed from vendor to vendor, the responsibility for workload protection is shared, which leads to complications. However, cloud workload protection helps in solving the issues and helps everyone share the protection responsibility.

Benefits of Cloud Workload Protection

Cloud workload protection is not only about protecting the workloads; it offers a range of benefits that make it a vital part of modern cloud security. Here are some key benefits you will get from implementing cloud workload protection: 

Comprehensive Visibility

One of the most significant benefits of CWP is that it provides complete visibility into all the workloads and helps you to monitor every activity. Importantly, through complete visibility it helps your team to accurately identify, hunt and respond to threats. Moreover, it also lets you configure the workloads to effectively manage vulnerabilities.

Continuous Behavioral Monitoring

CWP provides your team with a workload behavior monitoring feature that helps you identify unusual behavior or deviation from standard behavior. It helps in quickly detecting any intrusion that might be happening and provides alert to the team to remediate it.

CI/CD Support 

Another huge advantage of CWP is that it supports CI/CD workflow which makes it easier for your team to secure the workloads at the speed of the DevOps. This is particularly highly beneficial because it doesn’t hamper the performance of the application.

Combined Log Management and Monitoring

When you implement a CWP in your cloud environment, it combines log management and monitoring in a single interface. Through that interface it allows you to check everything that is happening with every part of the workload in multiple cloud environments.

Vulnerability Management

A CWP will also help you with effective vulnerability management where it identifies malicious permissions, functions, codes, and other security risks. It also assists in system hardening by eliminating all the attack vectors that might compromise workloads in different cloud environments.

Threat Intelligence

Some of the advanced CWP will also offer you threat intelligence capability where it will send alerts to the team regarding any potential threat that can affect the workloads. It is really useful for new kinds of threats.

Compliance Support

This security process also benefits your organization in adhering to compliance requirements that are stated by regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, NIST, SOC 2, PCI-DSS, etc. It adheres to the requirement by implementing necessary security measures and keeping audit trails.

Impressive Scalability

Cloud workload protection offers you an impressive scalability where it ensures consistent security coverage even when the number of workloads increases with time. It won’t leave any security gap when new workloads are added or migrated across varied cloud environments.

Cloud Workload Security Challenges

Even though CWP offers you a range of benefits, it also faces many security challenges. Since public cloud deployment works on a shared security model, both the provider and customer have to take necessary steps to ensure optimum security control. 

The complexity associated with cloud workload and advanced cloud technologies creates new challenges. Here are a few challenges that you will come across while using a CWP: 

Wide Attack Surface

Most modern organizations have a large number of virtual servers, systems, workloads, containers, and instances in different off-premises locations, and this expands the attack surface. The increasing number of system instances and virtual servers makes it challenging for CWP to ensure adequate security. 

Nowadays, many organizations have employees with varied security expertise levels but they do get the same privilege to create and use workloads, leading to a security challenge. The disparity in security expertise creates a huge issue, as not everyone maintains the same sanity.

Performance

Performance is another major challenge for cloud workload security, mainly due to the dynamic nature of cloud workloads and containers. Since the modern cloud is all about rapid deployment and scaling, the attack surface is evolving accordingly, and this factor poses a challenge to cloud workload security in maintaining performance across cloud environments.

Visibility

Even though CWP provides comprehensive visibility, having a complete and granular visibility into cloud workloads is a big issue. Traditional security solutions and containers serve as the biggest challenge in having granular visibility. 

Traditional security solutions are not meant to offer complete visibility, and containers, on the other hand, have a short lifespan, so teams can’t collect data and perform incident investigations properly. Moreover, the deployment of containers in different environments reduces visibility.

Configuration Management

Managing configuration is a huge requirement for cloud workload security because misconfiguration can lead to security security risks and data breaches. It is a huge challenge to maintain configuration for VMs, storage, and containers.

Dependency on Cloud Service Providers

Nowadays, most organizations use many cloud service providers, which creates a dependency on their security controls and practices. If any vulnerabilities and security issues arise on the cloud service provider’s end, then it would affect the cloud workload.

Cloud workload protection has a huge issue of extending security and addressing all those vulnerabilities.

How Does Cloud Workload Protection Differ From Traditional Cybersecurity?

When it comes to cloud workload protection, it not only takes a unique approach, but overall, it is quite different from traditional cybersecurity. Traditional cybersecurity only helps protect the endpoints and the network, while CWP focuses on securing the workloads and the infrastructure. Here are some of the factors that CWP from traditional cybersecurity: 

Security Responsibility

For traditional cybersecurity, organizations are solely responsible for safeguarding their on-premises data and infrastructure. However, for cloud workload protection, the security responsibility is shared between the user and the cloud service provider. 

The cloud workload protection vendor is responsible for the security of the cloud infrastructure where the workload is present, while you will have to secure the application, data, and access control.

Access Control

Another huge difference between traditional cybersecurity and cloud workload protection is in access control. Traditional cybersecurity only manages access control to on-premises resources. 

In contrast, cloud workload protection focuses on varied aspects of access control. It emphasizes safeguarding users’ access to cloud resources along with access to applications, services, devices, and remote users.

Scalability

Most modern organizations are shifting from traditional cybersecurity to cloud workload protection because of the huge scalability it has to offer. CWP can seamlessly scale as the number of cloud-based workloads grows and that too without compromising on degrading the security. 

However, you can’t say the same about traditional cybersecurity as they are often limited by the on-premises infrastructure. It requires much effort to scale the security when you decide to scale your on-premises infrastructure.

Multi-Cloud Tenancy

Cloud workloads are usually shared by multiple users of a cloud provider and that too without sacrificing the security. Whereas traditional security works differently as each cloud resources segment from other users and this is mostly done to secure the data access.

Automation

Another area where cloud workload protection differs greatly from traditional cybersecurity is automation. Cloud workload protection is highly automated, and most processes are automatically provisioned for effective protection across dynamic cloud environments. 

However, traditional cybersecurity doesn’t come with similar automation capabilities, and in most cases, the automation is limited to specific repetitive tasks.

Compliance Support

Both cloud workload protection and traditional cybersecurity offer compliance support, but there is a difference in the level. Cloud workload protection solutions are designed in such a way that they come with specialized features that help in meeting regulatory requirements and maintaining compliance. 

Usually, these solutions come with audit trails, policy enforcement, and other similar features. Even though traditional cybersecurity offers compliance support, they aren’t designed with compliance-specific features.

Key Requirements of Cloud Workload Protection Platform

To ensure optimum protection of the cloud workload, there are certain key requirements that every CWPP should meet. Let’s take a look at some key requirements of a cloud workload protection platform: 

Comprehensive Visibility

Every security team must get complete visibility into all the workload events, especially container events when using a CWPP. 

When the platform offers the ability to capture, assess, and store all the security events, it will provide comprehensive visibility and allow the team to identify and investigate threats. Visibility into all the events enables the team to respond to issues quickly.

Runtime Protection

Another key requirement of CWPP is runtime protection because it helps secure workloads, including containers and VMs, and prevents any kind of security issue. 

Vulnerability and misconfigurations can occur if they are not properly monitored and protected. Importantly, containers can also be attacked when they are left vulnerable. Runtime protection is useful in protecting the workloads as well as the host throughout.

Performance

Performance is a huge requirement for any CWPP because it will ensure it delivers the protection needed for workloads while having minimal impact on the workflow, system, and teams. 

Most importantly, CWPP should be able to deliver the protection needed without slowing down DevOps. If there is any inconvenience in DevOps, then it could lead to various repercussions that will ultimately hamper the overall security of the application. Moreover, CWPP should be able to secure workloads across the cloud, whether they are public, private, or hybrid.

Seamless Integration

A CWPP must offer seamless integration with all the existing tools of your organization and ensure the security of the workload throughout its lifecycle. The CWPP should integrate easily with the cloud platform you are operating, whether it is GCP, Azure, AWS, or any other similar platform. 

Importantly, the CWPP must also integrate with the SIEM system in your infrastructure and other security tools that help streamline the security operation.

Why CloudDefense.AI?

CloudDefense.AI serves as the leading choice when it comes to protecting the workload in your cloud environment. It is one of the best-rated cloud workload protection platforms that guarantee the protection of your cloud workloads against advanced cyber threats. It comes packed with some of the advanced features that help it address some sophisticated threats. What’s more? It unifies cloud workload security by unifying everything in one platform. Here are some fundamental reasons to consider CloudDefense.Ai as your solution: 

Advanced Assessment: This agentless platform utilizes workload-specific intelligence by integrating it with cloud configuration details and provides a holistic security assessment.

Quick Identification: Many global enterprises prefer this cutting-edge platform, and one of the primary reasons for this is its ability to quickly identify various cloud threats that might impact cloud workloads.

Comprehensive Insight: Another great thing about this solution is that it provides you with detailed insight into all the potential security threats by collecting data from runtime storage and cloud setup.

Open-Port Management: CloudDefense.AI will help your team constantly monitor and manage all the open ports in your workload. It is really useful in reducing the attack surface and enhancing overall security.

Vulnerability Prioritization: This platform leverages 20+ vulnerability data sources and contextual analysis to prioritize impactful vulnerabilities and ensure quick mitigation.

Advanced Malware Detection: CloudDefense.AI utilizes past records and documentation to detect any similar malware with high accuracy. Basically, it matches the file hashes against the repository, and it helps identify the malware.

Threat Tracking: It helps in threat tracking and identification by mapping all the contextual data with the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

Compliance Management: This CWPP tool simplifies the compliance adhering and maintaining process while safeguarding all the workloads.

Conclusion

Every organization running cloud-based applications are relying on cloud workload protection to safeguard all the workloads and maintain smooth operation. CWP has become a necessary solution for every modern organization to continuously monitor and eliminate all the threats that might impact the workload.

In this article, we have provided you with a detailed overview of CWP, what benefits it has on offer, and how it protects your workloads. We have also explained how integrating CloudDefense.AI into your existing system can help you fortify your defense around your workloads across the cloud.