Cloud Native Application Protection Platforms

Chapter 2. Playing to Win with Context and Collaboration

Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.

Henry Ford

In Chapter 1, the cloud native security game was framed as “they who play best together, win together.” Your teams of security engineers, developers, and runtime operations people have to collaborate closely in order to protect the breadth and depth of your cloud native systems and software development lifecycle. Closer collaboration speeds up your OODA loops, and those who OODA best will win.

Now, let’s take a look at how a Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) meets that challenge, starting with making your security world visible.

Surfacing and Observing Your Security

You can’t control what you cannot see or, better, observe.¹ To help support everyone’s need to collaborate on security, your CNAPP needs as much visibility of your system’s current and evolving state as possible. You want your security engineers to define the policies that your cloud native landscape requires, but first, you need to have a grip on the current, real-time, and evolving shape of that landscape, as shown in Figure 2-1.

Figure 2-1. The landscape of artifacts and resources created and managed by your teams

Working from left to right, Figure 2-1 shows the different types of teams and the artifacts that they focus on. Your ...