When comparing Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPPs) and Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPPs), differences come down to control, coverage, and trade-offs. While at first glance, CNAPPs consolidate while CWPPs specialize, there’s no perfect tooling to fit all use cases. So if your team has already dug into what CNAPP and CWPP handle on their own, but still has practical questions like, “Do CNAPPs replace CWPPs or just aggregate them?” and “Where do CWPPs still outperform CNAPPs?” we have answers.
CNAPP vs CWPP: A Practical Comparison
CNAPPs unify multiple security layers, including Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), CWPP, Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM), and often Infrastructure as Code (IaC) scanning. Ts goal is to secure the entire cloud stack.
CWPP tools focus on workload protection. While these security tools have absorbed much of the market and repositioned CWPP tools, there’s still a place for these standalone solutions that:
- Protect workloads at rest and at runtime
- Detect and prevent anomalous or malicious behavior running in workloads
- Cover workloads across virtual machines (VMs), containers, and serverless
While runtime protection is baked into Gartner’s original definition of the category and integral to stand-alone solutions, today, agentless CNAPP tools may market themselves as including CWPP without offering runtime protection, while others offer the depth typically reserved for standalone CWPPs.
| Feature | CNAPP | CWPP |
| Scope | Cloud-native app security (infrastructure plus runtime) | Workload-centric (VMs, containers, serverless) |
| Deployment Style | May be agentless, use agents, or employ next-gen sensors | Traditionally agent-based, with some agentless options |
| Runtime Protection | Varies, often included but may not be deep | Core feature, deep runtime telemetry |
| Breadth of Visibility | Infrastructure, configuration, permissions, and workload | Mainly centered on workload execution context only |
| Use in Air-Gapped/Private | Limited in some CNAPPs (especially if they rely heavily on cloud APIs) | More common in CWPPs, as agent-based approaches are easier to deploy in isolated environments |
Increasingly, the boundaries are blurring as CNAPPs develop stronger protection in private cloud environments and for deep telemetry into runtimes, while CWPPs develop greater coverage across the lifecycle of workloads and incorporate agentless and hybrid deployments for greater cloud scalability.
Runtime-Level Container Protection with Upwind
Upwind brings CWPP-grade runtime visibility into the CNAPP world with deep, runtime-powered container scanning features. The result? Real-time threat detection, contextualized analysis, remediation, and root cause analysis that’s 10X faster than traditional methods.
When a CNAPP is the Best Choice
CNAPPs aren’t only about consolidation. They’re useful for solving visibility gaps, context-blind decision-making, and workflow fragmentation that slows security teams as they zigzag between multiple tools, increasing the chances that issues will be missed and manual review will be inaccurate.
That unification is a key that CWPP alone can’t provide. But when else is CNAPP the best fit? Here are the use cases.
Tracing Risk from IaC to Runtime
CNAPP is best when the pain of not having full-stack correlation or unified visibility materially increases risk and costs. When there’s no time for GitHub postmortems and security needs to trace risk back to its origin without slowing development, a CNAPP makes more sense. Another key signal is when teams are juggling multiple standalone tools, but they’re not getting more information out of the sprawl — instead, they’re managing overlap without context.
Operating in Multi-Cloud or Cloud + K8s + Serverless
When different teams are using different services (ECS in AWS, ASK in Azure, Lambda, etc.), a CWPP may offer partial workload visibility but without any insight into cloud misconfiguration risks, identity paths, or Key Management Service (KMS) exposure without added tooling.
Without CNAPP, a misconfigured Identity and Access Management (IAM) role in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and a vulnerable Lambda function in AWS might look unrelated, that is, until an attacker strings them together. It’s about linking access controls with misconfigurations, network traffic, and runtime anomalies across cloud services. CNAPP is cloud-native security that spans cloud providers, but also aggregates layers for comprehensive security.
Regulated Industries with Tight Audit Cycles
CNAPP puts together critical security risks in the environment and helps teams show how they solved them, all tied to regulatory standards, without relying on manual action and spreadsheets. That correlation is key when teams have to show who had access, what policy failed, and how posture drifted.
Undergoing Breach Response or Red Team Testing
After a breach or a simulated attack, teams need to reconstruct the kill chain, showing configurations, identities, exposures, and lateral movement across clouds and services that don’t usually lend themselves to overarching visibility.
CNAPP solutions correlate network, identity, and runtime behavior so organizations can see what happened as well as why. That’s foundational to fixing root causes rather than just patching symptoms.
When a Standalone CWPP is Best
No matter how deep or modern your CNAPP, there may be times when a standalone CWPP provides the greater benefit. Consider CWPP for:
Strict Runtime Enforcement, Not Just Detection
At their best, CNAPPs can provide deep detection and context, leveraging runtime data to identify threats and prioritize risk based on real-world activity. However, most CNAPPs, including Upwind, stop short of full inline blocking to block execution of unauthorized binaries and syscalls at the kernel level in real time. They focus on high-fidelity detection and contextual analysis instead.
While CNAPPs can take automated actions like killing a malicious process or quarantining a workload from network traffic when threats are detected, and they enable the creation of preventative security policies to stop similar activity in the future, these responses are typically triggered by anomalies rather than being default-deny or inline at the kernel level.
CWPPs can enforce default-deny application allowlists, stop unknown processes instantly, and stop lateral movement by policy, before detection even kicks in.
Air-Gapped, On-Prem, or Disconnected Environments
Very few CNAPPs operate across the entire environment without limitations, especially in air-gapped or disconnected environments.
Leading platforms typically need an element of cloud connection, even temporarily, for updates or policy synchronization. That means that CNAPPS won’t fit the bill in use cases that require strict isolation. For companies like those in high-security defense fields, running containers entirely offline, CNAPPs may not be able to help. On the other hand, CWPPs can run fully on-prem, with host-based agents and local policy enforcement.
Fine-Grained Runtime Controls
While modern and runtime-powered CNAPPs offer many of the same deep detection abilities as their CWPP counterparts, true CWPPs provide syscall-level policy enforcement via default-deny enforcement. That’s important for teams that need laser-focused control over behavior, not just visibility.
Take, for example, the case of a fintech team that needs to block any curl, package manager, or shell spawning inside containers. It’s a job for CWPPs, which can enforce strict application allowlists and micro-segmentation at very specific levels.
Deterministic Host Hardening Across Legacy Infrastructure
As CWPP often wins out for cloud-native workloads in isolated environments, it can also be the right choice for legacy workloads that CNAPPs can’t reach.
CNAPPS are adept at handling cloud-native contests, from Lambda to Kubernetes and containers. But CWPPs are engineered to support a broader range of workload types, including bare-metal, traditional VMs, and legacy systems. They provide host-based intrusion prevention (IPS), anti-malware, and granular process control through agent-based protection. That makes them well-suited for organizations that need deterministic host hardening and runtime enforcement for legacy infrastructure.
Zero-Trust Runtime Posture
Modern CNAPPs can enforce runtime trust polices to a degree. That enforcement isn’t always as granular or immediate as specialized CWPPs, which can offer real-time, inline blocking at the kernel level. CNAPPs focus on broader policy enforcement.
However, when teams need to treat runtime like a firewall, not just gain visibility, they may find that CWPPs meet the challenge.
Integration vs Isolation: Who Owns Cybersecurity Outcomes?
Even when their technical capabilities blur and look similar on paper, CNAPPs and CWPPs fit into very different operational models, so the right tool may be the one with an on-hand team that can pull insight from the tool and remediate an issue — and do it quickly.
CNAPP Works Best When Security and DevOps Are Intertwined
Imagine a company that’s pushing code daily, asking devs to take more ownership over security as they grow.
That environment is a natural fit for CNAPP, which:
- Correlates security issues across layers, so that DevOps doesn’t need to swivel between tools.
- Plugs into existing CI/CD workflows, IaC templates, and GitOps policies, meeting them where they work.
- Offers centralized visibility without requiring deep security tuning per workload.
Dev teams may not be able to write syscall policies or tune runtime filters. CNAPPs let them enforce guardrails regardless. Those high-level policies (e.g., “no public buckets”) don’t require understanding the syscall graph. Security teams can provide context and prioritization, but devs fix issues with little friction.
And CNAPPs scale in environments where security needs shared ownership with engineering, not strict enforcement over them.
CWPPs Shine When a Dedicated Team Owns Runtime Defense
On the other hand, a company that works in a tightly regulated sector like finance or healthcare, with strict compliance regulations, may already work with a security team responsible for protecting runtime workloads.
That team might appreciate a standalone CWPP solution where they can:
- Find deep, low-level controls like syscall filtering, process allowlisting, and runtime anomaly blocking.
- Enforce deterministic runtime policies without relying on external signals and pipelines.
- Write, tune, and maintain runtime rules themselves, no devs required.
CWPP is about specificity and control. The trade-off is that runtime specialists will need to treat production like a controlled enclave where they’ll enforce specific policies. CWPP will give them control.
How is the team structured? The answer may be the starting point for getting the right tool and getting the most out of it.
Upwind Aligns Runtime Depth with Modern DevSecOps
Upwind brings CWPP-grade runtime visibility to the CNAPP space in a way that’s accessible to both central security teams and platform engineers. While it doesn’t replace CWPPs in use cases that demand strict, inline blocking or isolated deployments, it gives organizations the depth they need with the context and scalability modern teams expect.
If it’s time to unify detection, context, and response across infrastructure, identity, and runtime — while leaving fragmented tooling behind — it’s time to get a demo.
FAQ
Can CNAPPS fully replace CWPPs in regulated industries?
Regulated industries often require active enforcement at a granular level, which means teams will rely on both CWPP and CNAPP as they mature, since:
- CWPP provides inline blocking and application control for PCI, HIPAA, etc.
- CWPPs more easily satisfy deterministic deployment rules.
- Many CNAPPs lack on-prem and offline deployment model coverage. Look for a CNAPP that can cover your entire environment for the comprehensive application security that CNAPP promises.
Do CWPPs still matter in Kubernetes-native environments?
Even in K8s-first environments, some organizations will need syscall-level enforcement. A CWPP still matters when:
- Organizations need to block container drift and prevent shell escapes before they happen, not just see and remediate them quickly.
- Teams want to enforce per-pod or per-process runtime allowlists.
- Teams require per-container execution control
What’s the difference between agent and agentless runtime protection?
Agent vs agentless security is an ongoing debate. Add next-generation sensors to the discussion, and leaders can quickly find they’re overwhelmed with benefits and trade-offs.
In short, agentless security isn’t inherently less secure than agents or sensors. Agentless CNAPPs monitor metadata, not process behavior. They won’t have as much real-time control, but they’ll get fast insights, simple deployment, and cross-account and multi-cloud visibility instantly. They’re ideal for scanning posture.
Without an agent or next-generation sensor, teams won’t get full runtime telemetry, including process, syscall, network, and file operations. But they’ll meet a higher tuning and deployment burden in order to realize the full benefit. With sensors, there’s no performance overhead drawback, and teams will get real-time behavioral insight with depth and control.
If we use a CWPP, do we need a CNAPP?
It’s likely that teams using a CWPP will eventually need CNAPP, too. A CWPP offers deep workload protection, but it only covers one layer of the cloud stack, focusing on one behavior. Teams solely reliant on CWPP won’t see cloud misconfigurations, permissive identities, IaC security issues before deployment, or cross-layer attack paths correlated.
How does CNAPP detection compare to CWPP?
Comparing detection between CNAPP and CWPP is an apples-to-oranges endeavor. That’s because these tools focus on different layers and use different methods. Ultimately, CNAPPs offer broader, cross-layer detection. CWPPs typically go deeper at runtime, offering complementary detection capabilities.
