How ASPM Elevates Security for Today's Cloud Ecosystem

December 06, 2024

| Brett Shaw | Cloud & Application Security

Cloud technology has revolutionized business operations, but the digital transformation required to adopt and scale cloud technology exposes vulnerabilities that traditional cybersecurity approaches struggle to address — often leaving organizations vulnerable to adversaries.

Organizations face mounting challenges in managing security risks across cloud-native applications. Application code changes introduced over time create new risks for security teams to manage. Even with robust pre-production application security testing, there are still vulnerabilities that aren’t detected, misconfigurations that don’t surface and environment variables that aren’t accounted for. Cloud-native applications, often overlooked in cloud security strategies, have become prime targets as organizations grow more reliant on them.

This is where application security posture management (ASPM) comes in. ASPM is technology built to evaluate, manage and enhance the security of an organization’s custom applications. Incorporating ASPM in a unified cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) reduces the need for point cloud security products and strengthens overall cloud security posture. CrowdStrike Falcon® ASPM, natively integrated into CrowdStrike Falcon® Cloud Security, redefines how organizations secure applications with comprehensive visibility and risk management across modern cloud environments.

Here, we discuss the value of ASPM within a modern cloud security strategy and address key questions new adopters might have: What capabilities does ASPM include? What pain points does it solve for security and development teams? What should security leaders expect from an ASPM solution — and what does CrowdStrike bring to the table?

Why Do You Need ASPM?

Effective ASPM strengthens application security by aggregating, correlating and contextualizing risks in real time. By aligning with continuous delivery workflows, ASPM helps secure deployed code while keeping pace with rapid development cycles. Its key capabilities include:

Prioritizing risks based on exploitability, reachability and business context
Enforcing unified policies
Automating scanning, triaging, remediation and response workflows
Reporting the exploitability of vulnerabilities and threats that impact business services

These capabilities are essential due to the complexity of modern applications and the rate at which application code changes. Today’s applications are made up of tens or even hundreds of microservices, databases, APIs and third-party connections. This makes it challenging for teams to secure applications throughout development, testing, deployment and post-deployment code changes. ASPM provides a lens into this complex environment so issues are identified early.

ASPM’s capabilities extend beyond identifying cloud application risk. When cloud infrastructure security and workload protection tools find vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, ASPM adds application context so those issues can be quickly remediated. Further, it complements application security testing tools to provide a better understanding of risk.

How Falcon ASPM Helps Manage Business Risk

A robust ASPM solution must deliver holistic application inventory and visibility, automatically identifying and mapping applications across on-premises and cloud environments. Falcon ASPM leads in this domain by offering real-time, precise visibility and mapping for both cloud and on-premises applications. This visibility encompasses all microservices, APIs, data flows and dependencies, providing a comprehensive view of application architectures.

Falcon ASPM’s method for mapping applications is unique in several ways. First, it is agentless, meaning there is no impact to application performance. Second, it does not rely on network traffic monitoring or user activity. Each microservice, regardless of whether it is being used, is captured in the map and inventory, and ultimately assessed for risk. Finally, the process is real-time and continuous, making it useful for understanding applications as they exist in production. Both development and security teams have clarity in what they have deployed and what they are responsible for securing, even as application code changes are shipped.

Figure 1. Falcon ASPM Application Posture dashboard

The pace at which cloud-native applications are built, delivered and updated requires different capabilities to work together with one overarching goal in mind: Manage risk based on business impact. Falcon ASPM does this by aligning security insights with business priorities so teams better understand the implications of what a given microservice does, which applications use it and what types of data it is connected to. This enriched context translates to accurate, granular risk scoring and prioritization, which helps organizations focus their defenses where they matter most.

Falcon ASPM transforms risk management by automatically ranking vulnerabilities based on exploitability, reachability and business impact so the most critical vulnerabilities are addressed first. Our technology differentiates vulnerabilities in code libraries that are reachable (and therefore risky) from those that are not reachable. CVE reachability is included in Falcon ASPM’s risk triage and prioritization, reducing false positives for security teams to sift through — a reduction that allows security teams to focus on the highest risk priorities.

Figure 2. Falcon ASPM Risk Scoring dashboard

ASPM solutions must provide clear, actionable guidance to help organizations effectively remediate vulnerabilities. Falcon ASPM bridges the gap between security and development teams by providing actionable insights. Its seamless integration with tools like Jira, Azure DevOps and Slack provides faster collaboration and resolution. For every finding, Falcon ASPM identifies which applications are affected, the owner of the microservice where the vulnerability was found, its exact location (library version, line of code) and the specific action needed to remediate the risk. Finally, its integration with third-party workflow and communication tools allows Falcon ASPM to accelerate remediation efforts and reduce friction among teams.

Figure 3. Falcon ASPM assesses library vulnerabilities

Simplify, Save and Streamline

ASPM is essential to a cloud security platform solution. Adopting Falcon Cloud Security with Falcon ASPM natively integrated empowers security teams to:

Reduce complexity by unifying tools and eliminating redundant workflows
Increase efficiency with automated context-driven insights and actionable risk prioritization
Save time and resources by streamlining reviews and remediation across cloud and application environments

CrowdStrike sets the standard in cloud security with Falcon Cloud Security, the first CNAPP to natively integrate ASPM. By delivering comprehensive visibility, precise risk scoring and seamless workflows, Falcon Cloud Security enables organizations to better protect every layer of their cloud environment with confidence. Falcon Cloud Security is designed to provide broader visibility and better protection across every layer — from infrastructure to applications and data.