Cloud Native Application Security: Patterns and Anti-Patterns

This whitepaper walks through the critical challenges of cloud native application security, demonstrates how to build security into the CI/CD pipeline, and introduces the core patterns and anti-patterns of cloud native application security.

Topics covered include:

  • Key challenges with cloud-native application security
  • Injecting security Into DevOps
  • Cloud native security patterns and anti-patterns
  • Shared responsibility model for security
  • OWASP framework

Enterprises are rapidly adopting cloud native architectures and design patterns to help deliver business values faster, improve user experience, maintain a faster pace of innovation, and ensure high availability and scalability of their products. Cloud native applications leverage modern practices like microservices architecture, containerization, DevOps, infrastructure-as-code, and automated CI/CD processes.

However, there are numerous security challenges due to this complex and dynamic landscape. Users have faced multiple security risks like data breaches, data loss, denial of service, insecure APIs, account hijacking, vulnerabilities, and identity and access management challenges. Enterprises need to continuously adapt security best practices to handle these issues.

These core security concepts cannot be isolated and must be consistently integrated into the development lifecycle. Enterprises have been able to find ways to balance security and the speed of delivery by embracing automation, continuous delivery, and, most importantly, building a DevOps culture.

This whitepaper walks through the critical challenges of cloud native application security, demonstrates how to build security into the CI/CD pipeline, and introduces the core patterns and anti-patterns of cloud native application security.