Frost Radar™: Cloud Workload Protection Platforms, 2025
A Benchmarking System to Spark Companies to Action - Innovation That Fuels New Deal Flow and Growth Pipelines
22-Sep-2025
Global
Frost Radar
PG3M-01-00-00-00
AE_2025_33894
Organizations worldwide continue to accelerate their cloud migration, driven by the surge of AI-native applications and services that on-premises systems are not designed for. Multicloud and hybrid cloud strategies are becoming the norm in their digital transformation journey. This has exposed new security challenges, such as inconsistencies in controls across cloud platforms and gaps in workload risk and threat visibility, that attackers have been quick to exploit.
A cloud workload protection platform (CWPP) manages these complex environments, providing comprehensive visibility and security protection for cloud workloads, applications, and data. These platforms enable automation, deep visibility, and the detection of anomalous behaviors and threats across diverse cloud workloads, such as containers, K8s clusters, and serverless functions.
A CWPP, which is normally agent-based, is a server workload-centric security solution to protect computing workloads in cloud environments (private, public, hybrid, and multicloud) from cybersecurity risks and attacks, regardless of the workload's location.
Frost & Sullivan analyzes numerous companies in an industry. Those selected for further analysis based on their leadership or other distinctions are benchmarked across 10 Growth and Innovation criteria to reveal their position on the Frost Radar™. The publication presents competitive profiles of each company on the Frost Radar™ considering their strengths and the opportunities that best fit those strengths.
Analyst: Anh Tien Vu
Strategic Imperative and Growth Environment
Strategic Imperative
- Organizations worldwide continue to accelerate their cloud adoption in 2025; multicloud and hybrid cloud strategies are becoming the norm as businesses diversify their strategies and migrate a greater volume of workloads to cloud environments. Cloud migration is also driven by the surge in adoption of AI-native applications and services, as on-premises systems are not designed to support them.
- The broad adoption of cloud has exposed new security challenges, such as inconsistencies in controls across cloud platforms and gaps in workload risk and threat visibility, which attackers have been quick to exploit. This has driven a corresponding rise in demand for cloud workload protection solutions to manage these complex environments and provide comprehensive visibility and security protection for cloud workloads, applications, and data.
- Many businesses realize that they must adopt CWPP to protect their critical workloads in these complex cloud environments by enabling automation, deep visibility, and detection of misconfiguration, vulnerabilities, secret exposure, policy violation, compliance misalignment, anomalous behavior and threats across diverse cloud workloads, such as containers, K8s clusters, and serverless functions.
- A CWPP, which is normally agent-based, is a server workload-centric security solution to protect computing workloads in cloud environments (private, public, hybrid, and multicloud) from cybersecurity risks and attacks, regardless of the workload's location. Typical workloads that CWPPs secure include cloud/edge servers, hosts, VMs, containers/K8s, serverless functions, databases (SQL and NoSQL), APIs, and AI models.
- By providing critical pre-deployment security checks, such as scanning of IaC templates, virtual machine and container images, and compliance management, CWPPs can provide better workload misconfiguration and vulnerability management across workloads, repositories, CI/CD pipelines, and application codes and automate remediation to reduce exposure to supply chain attacks.
Growth Environment
- The CWPP industry is in a growth phase and has evolved rapidly, with vendors prioritizing real-time threat detection, runtime protection, and cloud-native workload visibility. Many LBs invest heavily in cloud security technologies and their workforce to secure workloads, applications, and data to avoid service disruptions and data breaches and adhere to regulatory compliances.
- The CWPP market is expected to generate revenue of $6.43 billion in 2025, representing YoY growth of 25.4%. Revenue is set to hit $15.54 billion in 2030 (a compound annual growth rate of 19.3% from 2025 to 2030).
- Customers in the BFSI and tech industries are the largest adopters of CWPP, requiring robust cloud security solutions to manage compliance, shift-left security, vulnerability/risk management, and runtime protection/threat management. They take a proactive approach to cloud security and cyber-risk management as they accelerate their cloud migration for critical workloads.
- The growth of cloud spending, better awareness of the cloud threat landscape, and heightened accountability of CISOs and their teams are driving CWPP adoption globally. The use of multicloud, hybrid cloud, and containerized environments in modern application development exacerbates inherent cloud security challenges that create gaps in visibility and control in the supply chain.
- Simultaneously, as organizations are maturing their DevSecOps culture, there are requirements for integration of CWPP with the CI/CD pipeline to enable automated security and compliance checks. This integration provides granular visibility into the entire application development lifecycle.
Aqua Security
CrowdStrike
Fortinet
Microsoft
Orca Security
Palo Alto Networks
QAX
Qualys
SentinelOne
Sophos
Sysdig
Tenable
Trellix
Trend Micro
Uptycs
Wiz
Best Practices
Growth Opportunities
Significance of Being on the Frost Radar
Frost Radar Empowers the CEO’s Growth Team
Frost Radar Empowers Investors
Frost Radar Empowers Customers
Frost Radar Empowers the Board of Directors
Next Steps
Legal Disclaimer
Frost Radar™: Benchmarking Future Growth Potential 2 Major Indices, 10 Analytical Ingredients, 1 Platform
Growth Index
Growth Index (GI) is a measure of a company’s growth performance and track record, along with its ability to develop and execute a fully aligned growth strategy and vision; a robust growth pipeline system; and effective market, competitor, and end-user focused sales and marketing strategies.
-
Market Share (previous 3 years)
This is a comparison of a company’s market share relative to its competitors in a given market space for the previous 3 years. -
Revenue Growth (previous 3 years)
This is a look at a company’s revenue growth rate for the previous 3 years in the market/industry/category that forms the context for the given Frost Radar™. -
Growth Pipeline
This is an evaluation of the strength and leverage of a company’s growth pipeline system to continuously capture, analyze, and prioritize its universe of growth opportunities. -
Vision and Strategy
This is an assessment of how well a company’s growth strategy is aligned with its vision. Are the investments that a company is making in new products and markets consistent with the stated vision? -
Sales and Marketing
This is a measure of the effectiveness of a company’s sales and marketing efforts in helping it drive demand and achieve its growth objectives.
Innovation Index
Innovation Index (II) is a measure of a company’s ability to develop products/ services/ solutions (with a clear understanding of disruptive Mega Trends) that are globally applicable, are able to evolve and expand to serve multiple markets and are aligned to customers’ changing needs.
-
INNOVATION SCALABILITY
This determines whether an organization’s innovations are globally scalable and applicable in both developing and mature markets, and also in adjacent and non-adjacent industry verticals. -
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
This is a measure of the efficacy of a company’s R&D strategy, as determined by the size of its R&D investment and how it feeds the innovation pipeline. -
PRODUCT PORTFOLIO
This is a measure of a company’s product portfolio, focusing on the relative contribution of new products to its annual revenue. -
MEGATRENDS LEVERAGE
This is an assessment of a company’s proactive leverage of evolving, long-term opportunities and new business models, as the foundation of its innovation pipeline. -
CUSTOMER ALIGNMENT
This evaluates the applicability of a company’s products/services/solutions to current and potential customers, as well as how its innovation strategy is influenced by evolving customer needs.
Significance of Being on the Frost Radar™
Companies plotted on the Frost RadarTM are the leaders in the industry for growth, innovation, or both. They are instrumental in advancing the industry into the future.
-
GROWTH POTENTIAL
Your organization has significant future growth potential, which makes it a Company to Action. -
BEST PRACTICES
Your organization is well positioned to shape Growth Pipeline™ best practices in your industry. -
COMPETITIVE INTENSITY
Your organization is one of the key drivers of competitive intensity in the growth environment. -
CUSTOMER VALUE
Your organization has demonstrated the ability to significantly enhance its customer value proposition. -
PARTNER POTENTIAL
Your organization is top of mind for customers, investors, value chain partners, and future talent as a significant value provider.
Speak directly with our analytics experts for tailored recommendations.
Recent related Security research
19 Aug 2026 | Global | Frost Radar
Frost Radar™: Cloud Workload Protection Platforms, 2026
Organizations worldwide continue to accelerate cloud, cloud-native, and AI adoption. Multicloud and hybrid cloud strategies are now standard for large enterprises, while containers, Kubernetes clusters, serverless functions, cloud virtual machines, APIs, and AI workloads are becoming the execution l...
13 Aug 2026 | Global | Market Research
Customer Transformation Journeys - Modern Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): NSFOCUS
This report examines how NSFOCUS Intelligent Security Operations Platform (ISOP) helps organizations modernize security operations amid rising cyber threats, expanding alert volumes, and persistent cybersecurity talent shortages. Based on Frost & Sullivan’s independent analysis and customer interv...
13 Aug 2026 | Global | Market Research
Customer Transformation Journeys - MSP-Enabled Microsoft 365 Security: Hornetsecurity by Proofpoint
Hornetsecurity by Proofpoint enables managed service providers (MSPs) to deliver integrated Microsoft 365 security through a portfolio spanning email protection, backup and recovery, permission management, compliance, and security awareness. Based on interviews with MSP partners, this Customer Trans...
12 Aug 2026 | Global | Market Research
Smart Public Safety Initiatives, Global, 2026
This study examines the global smart public safety initiatives landscape in 2025, focusing on how cities are using advanced digital technologies to improve urban security, emergency response, and crime prevention. It analyzes the shift from traditional, reactive public safety infrastructure toward m...
07 Aug 2026 | Global | Technology Research
Growth Opportunities in AI Processors, Silicon Photonics, SoCs and Chiplets
The Microelectronics Technology Opportunity Engine covers innovations pertaining to AI Processors, Silicon Photonics, SoCs and Chiplets among others.
The Microelectronics Technology Opportunity Engine captures global electronics-related innovations and developments on a weekly basis. Developm...
Purchase includes:
- Report download
- Growth Dialog™ with our experts
Growth Dialog™
A tailored session with you where we identify the:- Strategic Imperatives
- Growth Opportunities
- Best Practices
- Companies to Action
Impacting your company's future growth potential.
A cloud workload protection platform (CWPP) manages these complex environments, providing comprehensive visibility and security protection for cloud workloads, applications, and data. These platforms enable automation, deep visibility, and the detection of anomalous behaviors and threats across diverse cloud workloads, such as containers, K8s clusters, and serverless functions.
A CWPP, which is normally agent-based, is a server workload-centric security solution to protect computing workloads in cloud environments (private, public, hybrid, and multicloud) from cybersecurity risks and attacks, regardless of the workload's location.
Frost & Sullivan analyzes numerous companies in an industry. Those selected for further analysis based on their leadership or other distinctions are benchmarked across 10 Growth and Innovation criteria to reveal their position on the Frost Radar™. The publication presents competitive profiles of each company on the Frost Radar™ considering their strengths and the opportunities that best fit those strengths.
Analyst: Anh Tien Vu
| Deliverable Type | Frost Radar |
|---|---|
| Industries | Aerospace, Defence and Security |
| No Index | No |
| Is Prebook | No |
| Keyword 1 | cloud workload protection market |
| Keyword 2 | CWPP growth forecast 2025 |
| Keyword 3 | cybersecurity workload platforms |
| Podcast | No |
| Predecessor | PFNV-01-00-00-00 |
| WIP Number | PG3M-01-00-00-00 |