Be part of our day by day and weekly newsletters for the most recent updates and unique content material on industry-leading AI protection. Be taught Extra
The actual story: Velocity and Safety at DevOps scale
The actual story behind Google buying Wiz is how badly the necessity for pace dominates each enterprise’s DevOps cycles constructing apps, fashions and platforms with out sacrificing safety.
By buying Wiz, Google will get an AI-infused Cloud Native Software Safety Platform (CNAPP) designed to get rid of DevSecOps bottlenecks, forestall assaults by and on fashions in improvement, forestall cloud breaches and scale multi-cloud safety in actual time. The Wiz CNAPP platform has earned a world popularity by utilizing AI to reinforce its menace detection, predictive analytics, automated remediation, and discount of false positives.
Wiz will combine Google’s threat detection, menace intelligence and automatic remediation, which all are desk stakes for safeguarding each stage of cloud-based app and mannequin improvement. That’s a strong contribution to Wiz’s graph-based safety engine designed to search out and comprise assault paths immediately, prioritize precise dangers and assist safety groups determine and repair vulnerabilities earlier than they’re exploited.
Google paying $32 billion in money indicators simply how pressing the necessity for pace is throughout DevOps cycles which have been asking for an AI-driven CNAPP platform that may flex and scale to maintain up with extra advanced DevOps cycles.
“While Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has been investing in built-in CNAPP capabilities for their own platform’s native security with success, these tools have predominantly focused only on protecting GCP endpoints/assets,” says Andras Cser, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester.
Cser added, “after Microsoft’s 2021 early acquisition of CloudKnox and development of Defender for Cloud, Google is feeling the pressure to offer a true, multicloud-capable CNAPP tool given that so many organizations are multi-cloud today. Forrester expects that, post-acquisition, most current CNAPP capabilities in GCP (CSPM, CIEM, agentless CWP) will be replaced by Wiz’s offering and remain with multi-cloud support.”
Google simply made CNAPP the Formulation 1 of Cloud Safety
In skilled racing, as in DevOps, groups obsess over squeezing the final ounce of pace positive factors out of their engines or code. Understanding that just some milliseconds gained by lowering the drag on a Formulation 1 automobile or making slight engine enhancements imply the distinction between a profitable season or not.
CNAPP is without doubt one of the engines DevOps and DevSecOps groups depend on to cut back dangers, block intrusions and breaches, and supply a 360 view of CI/CD pipelines to verify they’re safe. Having a CNAPP that’s AI-driven delivers extra correct remediation and steering, contextual menace intelligence and blocks intrusion makes an attempt on CI/CD pipelines defending code.
“While Wiz is most focused on CNAPP, the firm’s product offerings bleed into the traditional application security space, with container and Kubernetes security pieces. Recently Wiz expanded into security in the software development phases with software composition analysis (SCA), IAC scanning, and secrets scanning, as well as diving into the software supply chain use case with software bill of materials (SBOM) and CI/CD security posture. These are moves that put Wiz in a position to compete with application security testing vendors and other CNAPP vendors who have ‘shifted left,” defined Forrester Senior Analyst Janet Worthington.
DevOps groups are beneath fixed, rising stress to ship. With bonuses usually using on if a supply date for code is met, safety is tacked on to the top of a CI/CD cycle or product schedule. VentureBeat discovered that the everyday Fortune 1,000 IT division has over 175 energetic, concurrent DevOps tasks working directly, with many having no constant cloud utility safety. In different phrases, these 175 tasks are working in a wide range of unprotected cloud environments with out a frequent CNAPP platform to guard them. That’s jeopardizing the complete DevOps pipeline which is a transfer made to cut back time-to-market that leaves dozens of tasks in danger.
Why Google doubled down on Wiz
Google’s ambitions to develop Google Cloud Platform (GCP) wanted a cybersecurity platform that might go end-to-end, shield DevOps and strengthen DevSecOps whereas leveraging AI to ship real-time menace detection, automated remediation and full-stack cloud safety.
The actual purpose of this acquisition is to have a unified CNAPP answer able to securing all the things from code to cloud to runtime, making certain that safety now not slows down improvement however accelerates it. Wiz’s AI-driven threat evaluation, assault path visualization and multi-cloud safety give GCP a aggressive edge, making it a viable competitor in an more and more crowded market pushed by enterprises needing pace, scale and resilience in cloud safety.
“Google has invested heavily in application security tooling that protects apps deployed not only in GCP but in other clouds (and on-premises). Google’s investment in its Cloud Armor platform has added web application firewall functionality that is competitive not just with Microsoft and AWS but with other WAF providers. reCaptcha Enterprise has expanded from a Captcha provider into a fuller bot management platform that addresses a range of business logic attacks,” says Forrester Principal Analyst Sandy Carielli.
“In recent months, Google has begun extending its API management product, Apigee, into broader API security use cases. While there are still gaps to fill, adding Wiz to the combined Cloud Armor, reCaptcha, and Apigee offerings moves Google closer to a holistic defense story for cloud applications,” Carielli continued.
Google wanted a unified AI-driven CNAPP to turbocharge its cybersecurity enterprise. One which brings collectively safety posture administration, workload safety, superior menace detection right into a excessive efficiency safety engine. Challenged by having a siloed strategy to safety prior to now, Google is seeking to now have a adaptive, versatile platform that may present safety on the pace of cloud app improvement.
Previous to this deal, GCP’s safety toolkit was robust, but siloed as evidenced by its Chronicle SIEM, Mandiant menace intel and all kinds of accomplice options that created roadblocks throughout clients’ CI/CD pipeline. Buying Wiz closes a significant hole of their cybersecurity technique by offering an built-in AI-driven platform that scans cloud environments in minutes and determine dangers in actual time.
CNAPP has a quick observe with AI savvy rivals
The international CNAPP market was valued at roughly $9.79 billion in 2023 and is projected to achieve $38.01 billion by 2030, rising at a compound annual progress price (CAGR) of about 21.8% through the forecast interval. Gartner notes that end-user calls on CNAPPs rose 29% from 2023 to 2024, with an emphasis on Cloud Safety Posture Administration (CSPM) pushed by compliance and simple API deployment, with expectations of runtime visibility and management.
“Wiz’s key detection and response offering Wiz Defend takes a different approach to cloud detection and response. Instead of relying on built-in detection capabilities in its own cloud protection tools, it offers a unified tool solely for detection and response that takes in alerts and data from other tools and does detection engineering on them,” says Forrester Principal Analyst Allie Mellen.
“This reduces alert volumes from the cloud at a critical time. With this acquisition, it will put pressure on other vendors to consolidate in a similar way — a big win for security operations teams,” Mellen continued.
The CNAPP market is more and more changing into the Formulation 1 of cloud safety, with Google, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike and Test Level main the cost.
- Test Level CloudGuard: A CNAPP answer designed for multi-cloud safety, runtime safety and automatic compliance enforcement. CloudGuard’s agent-based and agentless safety helps shield workloads, Kubernetes environments, and serverless functions.
- CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Safety: Increasing from endpoint safety to cloud, CrowdStrike brings its menace intelligence management into CNAPP. Falcon Cloud Safety offers code-to-cloud visibility, IaC scanning, and runtime menace detection, reinforcing proactive breach prevention.
- Microsoft Defender for Cloud: A deeply built-in CNAPP that extends throughout Azure, AWS, and GCP, providing runtime safety, id safety, and AI-driven menace intelligence. With Safety Copilot, Microsoft is leveraging generative AI to automate menace detection and remediation.
Different CNAPP distributors available in the market embrace Aqua Safety, Lacework, Orca Safety, Palo Alto Networks, SentinelOne, Sysdig and Pattern Micro all providing options for cloud safety, workload safety and posture administration.
The AI-enabled CNAPP race is simply starting
Google’s resolution to make their single largest acquisition in its historical past says they see the ache of siloed gradual processes in enterprises they will shortly flip right into a worthwhile new a part of their cybersecurity enterprise. CNAPP is the racing engine their prosects and present clients are in search of.
For CISOs and safety leaders, the important thing takeaway is evident: the way forward for cloud safety belongs to platforms that combine AI, automate threat detection, and supply full-stack visibility throughout multi-cloud environments. Whether or not Google’s Wiz-powered CNAPP takes the lead will rely on how properly it integrates with Google’s AI-driven menace intelligence and safety operations suite.
Backside line: Enterprises want AI-powered CNAPP options to streamline CI/CD safety and scale back the cloud safety burden on DevOps groups. The competitors amongst distributors—led by Google’s Wiz-powered push—can be received by those that finest combine AI, automate threat detection, and supply full-stack visibility throughout multi-cloud environments.
