Cloud Workload Protection Priorities Rise in 2020

Portshift, a leader in Kubernetes-native solutions, today announced increasing prioritization by enterprises on the compliant protection of cloud workloads, including container-based applications and data in Kubernetes environments. To be effective, Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) must be proactive in their defense and scanning of vulnerabilities in runtime.

According to Gartner’s Market Guide for Cloud Workload Protection Platforms, “The market for endpoint protection has bifurcated into offerings focused on end-user-focused device protection – EPP – and CWPP – the market discussed in this research. CWPPs protect server workloads from attack, regardless of the location or granularity of the workload. CWPPs provide security and risk management leaders with consistent visibility and control of all server workloads.”

Several key findings in the report include:

• “Enterprises using endpoint protection platform (EPP) offerings designed solely for protecting end-user devices (e.g., desktops, laptops) for server workload protection are putting enterprise data and applications at risk.”
• “Increasingly, container and serverless workloads are scanned for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in development, but are deployed with little or no runtime protection within the workload and instead rely on external network instrumentation and event monitoring to detect threats.”
• “There is more risk from cloud infrastructure misconfiguration than from workload compromise.”

Powered by deep integration with Kubernetes, Portshift’s Cloud Workload Protection Platform delivers rich context, declarative policy enforcement, improved risk profiling, vulnerability management, runtime detection and remediation for cloud native applications. Portshift is the only Kubernetes-native solution offering an agentless approach with Kubernetes admission control for seamless integration and native enforcement. Additionally, the cloud-native workload protection platform empowers DevOps and Security teams to continuously protect their growing Kubernetes deployments and multi-clusters, utilizing the power of this lightweight solution to protect against threats and vulnerabilities across images, containers, runtime deployments and Kubernetes infrastructure.

The Gartner report further states, “Occasionally, we still find enterprises using end-user-focused EPP offerings designed for desktops, laptops and tablets on server workloads. These are ill-suited for the requirements of dynamic hybrid, multi-cloud workload protection. The risk profile and threat exposure of a server workload is markedly different from an end-user-facing system. Enterprises that use an EPP offering designed for end-user supporting devices are putting enterprise data and applications at risk. In contrast, CWPP offerings focus on the protection needs of server workloads in a modern hybrid (on-premises and cloud-based), multi-cloud (using multiple public cloud IaaS providers) data center.”

“Portshift CWPP solutions provide enterprises with a much more effective and scalable way to protect cloud-based workloads while providing comprehensive control, regardless of deployment size or configuration,” said Ran Ilany, CEO and Co-Founder, Portshift. “Our leading-edge solutions enable DevOps, Security and Operations to team up and utilize powerful identity-based workload protection for continuous security of cloud-native applications – helping secure Kubernetes microservices from development to runtime.”