Traditional AppSec tools have reached their limit, especially in today's cloud-native environments. SAST, DAST, and SCA each play a role, but none can protect what matters most: your running cloud applications, APIs, and services.

Runtime AppSec fills this gap by providing real-time visibility, continuous monitoring, and active protection across your entire cloud stack; something scanners simply cannot do.

Comparing Traditional vs. Runtime AppSec in the Cloud

Let us examine how Runtime AppSec addresses the key criteria that modern cloud application security should meet, compared to traditional approaches:

1. Real-Time Cloud Application Observability

The most critical requirement for effective AppSec is deep observability in a running application, where application logic and vulnerabilities are actively executed and exposed. This is especially critical in cloud environments where applications run across containers, microservices, and serverless functions. Only in runtime can you achieve the most accurate insight into an application's behavior and security flaws.

Traditional tools fall short:

• SAST and SCA have no visibility into running cloud applications or infrastructure

• DAST operates at runtime but remains a "black box" technology with severely limited observability, missing internal cloud services and APIs

Runtime AppSec delivers: Complete and detailed insight into cloud application behavior, container workloads, inter-service communication, and security vulnerabilities—all during actual application runtime in your cloud environment.

2. Always-Active Security Coverage for Dynamic Cloud Environments

Traditional AppSec tools (SAST, DAST, SCA) are intermittent scanners that create coverage gaps, often lasting weeks or months between scans. This leaves applications vulnerable during these intervals. In cloud environments where containers spin up and down, auto-scaling occurs, and deployments happen multiple times per day; these gaps are even more critical.

Runtime AppSec operates as a continuous monitor, not a scanner. It provides uninterrupted monitoring of cloud applications, containers, and APIs, ensuring they are never left unwatched, unobserved, or unprotected, even as your cloud infrastructure scales dynamically.

3. Complete Cloud Asset Discovery

Modern cloud applications require comprehensive asset discovery capabilities to identify and analyze code, components, endpoints, containers, Kubernetes pods, APIs, microservices, and more. Traditional tools only capture partial asset inventories:

• SAST focuses primarily on code

• SCA concentrates on components

• DAST examines endpoints

Runtime AppSec sees the complete picture in your cloud environment, observing application processes from origin through execution and capturing APIs, microservices, containers, serverless functions, libraries, and components in their operational context across your entire cloud stack.

4. Comprehensive API Security for Cloud-Native Architectures

API security has become a high-priority AppSec requirement, especially in cloud environments where APIs connect to microservices and enable service-to-service communication. Unfortunately, traditional tools provide limited to no API security capabilities and cannot observe internal cloud APIs.

Runtime AppSec excels at API security in cloud environments by:

• Detecting every running API without fail, including internal microservice APIs

• Analyzing APIs for vulnerabilities in real-time across your cloud infrastructure

• Validating vulnerabilities through instant runtime testing

• Monitoring API gateways and service meshes with full context

5. Advanced Open-Source Security Across Cloud Workloads

Open-source security is fundamental to software supply chain protection, especially in containerized cloud environments. While SCA traditionally handles this responsibility, it has significant limitations:

• Coverage limited to the development phase only

• Intermittent scanning creates coverage gaps

• No visibility into which components are loaded in running containers, affecting analysis accuracy

SAST and DAST provide no open-source security capabilities.

Runtime SCA transforms open-source security in the cloud by:

• Conducting analysis during both DevTest and production runtime across all cloud workloads

• Continuously monitoring each component loaded for execution in containers and pods

• Operating across both Dev and Ops phases of the software lifecycle

• Identifying which vulnerable libraries are actually active in your cloud environment

6. Active Threat Protection for Cloud Workloads

Traditional AppSec tools can only detect vulnerabilities and provide remediation advice—they cannot actively block attacks against your cloud infrastructure.

Runtime AppSec goes beyond detection to provide active protection by blocking malicious processes in your cloud environment. For example, it can block an API or open-source component that exposes a production cloud application to attack, preventing exploitation of containers and microservices in real-time.

7. Complete Lifecycle Coverage Across Cloud Environments

While traditional tools (SAST, DAST, SCA) operate primarily during the development phase, Runtime AppSec provides comprehensive coverage across both development and operations phases in your cloud environment. This unified approach offers significant advantages, allowing the same technology to protect applications throughout the entire DevOps lifecycle, from development clusters through production cloud infrastructure.

The Bottom Line

Runtime AppSec significantly exceeds the capabilities of traditional AppSec tools for protecting cloud environments. It addresses modern cloud security requirements by enabling:

• Deep observability into running cloud applications, containers, and microservices

• Continuous monitoring of security posture across dynamic cloud infrastructure

• Comprehensive API and open-source security across the entire cloud DevOps lifecycle

• Active threat protection beyond just detection for cloud workloads

As cloud applications become more complex and threats evolve, Runtime AppSec represents the next generation of application security, one that meets the demands of modern cloud-native development and deployment practices.

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