Prowler Tutorial: Features, Use Cases, How It Works

TL;DR, What is Prowler?

Prowler is an open-source command-line tool for cloud security posture management (CSPM), assessments, remediations, hardening, and incident response.

Keeping multi-cloud environments secure is tough because manual audits can’t keep up with constant changes. To solve this, Prowler provides automated security monitoring and assessments. Prowler evaluates your cloud configurations against hundreds of controls from frameworks like CIS, NIST, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, FFIEC, and ENS. You get clear results to help you maintain a compliant security posture.

Originally created by Toni de la Fuente, Prowler is now maintained as an open-source project by the Prowler team (ProwlerPro, Inc.).

CSPM Buyer's Guide [RFP Template Included]

This buyer’s guide aims to help you understand current market offerings by evaluating the capabilities of legacy and modern CSPM tools, so you can improve your security posture by choosing the right CSPM solution for your organization.

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At-A-Glance

URL: https://github.com/prowler-cloud/prowler 

License: Apache-2.0

Primary Language: Python

Stars: 12.1k ⭐  

Last Relevance: September 2025.

Topics/Tags: cloud-security, cspm, aws, azure, gcp, kubernetes, security-auditing, compliance-auditing, cis-benchmarks, gdpr, hipaa, pci-dss, soc2, nist

Common use cases

1. CI/CD Pipeline Security: You can integrate Prowler directly into CI/CD pipelines to scan infrastructure-as-code (IaC) templates and new resources automatically. With this shift-left approach, your developers get instant feedback on misconfigurations before they reach production. You can also configure builds to fail if they don’t pass critical security checks, making security a required quality gate.

2. Continuous Compliance Monitoring: You can deploy Prowler for automated, scheduled assessments to maintain compliance with frameworks like PCI DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and SOC 2. Security teams can use Prowler to generate regular reports for auditors. The tool’s proactive monitoring helps you maintain your compliance posture by automatically finding and alerting on any configuration drift that violates policy.

3. Incident Response and Forensics: Security operations teams use Prowler as an assessment tool during a security incident. If you suspect a breach, you can run Prowler against the affected environment to quickly find misconfigurations, insecure permissions, or compliance gaps an attacker may have used. Prowler's findings provide important context for forensic analysis and help you contain the incident.

4. Multi-Cloud Security Governance: Prowler helps you enforce a consistent set of security standards across cloud providers like AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes. Your central security team can define a baseline policy and use the tool’s unified scanning to make sure all business units and cloud accounts follow it. The result is centralized visibility and control over your multi-cloud architecture.

5. Custom Security Policy Enforcement: You can use Prowler to automate your organization's unique internal security policies via Prowler Hub and custom Python checks. Teams can write custom checks that go beyond standard compliance frameworks to address specific application risks or architectural patterns. Using custom checks ensures your organization's security requirements are continuously monitored and enforced across all cloud assets.

How does Prowler work?

Prowler's core CLI engine drives its security scanning. The engine starts by securely authenticating to your cloud provider accounts using methods like IAM roles or API keys. Once connected, Prowler queries your cloud resource configurations and checks them against its library of over 1,000 security rules. The tool then compiles the findings into reports in formats like JSON, CSV, and HTML. For larger deployments, a web-based application called Prowler App—that includes a UI, APIs,and SDKs—adds management features and integrations with other security tools.

• Modular Check Engine: Prowler's security checks are individual Python modules that interact directly with cloud provider APIs to gather and assess configuration data.

• Scalable Backend: For enterprise use, Prowler App features a backend with a Django REST API, PostgreSQL for storage, and Celery workers for asynchronous scanning.

• Extensible Frameworks: Prowler supports custom check development and compliance frameworks through Prowler Hub, a central repository for versioned security rules and mappings.

Core Capabilities:

1. Multi-Cloud Security Assessment: Prowler gives you a unified security assessment platform for different cloud environments, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Kubernetes. The tool centralizes security scanning, so you don't need multiple tools. A unified approach helps you implement consistent security policies, standardize evaluations, and get a complete view of your multi-cloud security posture. Prowler simplifies management and reporting, allowing security teams to enforce governance standards uniformly across all cloud infrastructures.

2. Compliance Framework Support: Prowler provides out-of-the-box support for over 25 industry and regulatory standards, including CIS Benchmarks, NIST, HIPAA, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, FFIEC, ENS, and SOC 2. With more than 1,000 built-in security checks mapped to these frameworks, the tool automates compliance validation and simplifies audit preparation. Prowler also provides structured reporting, gap analysis, and remediation guidance for specific compliance requirements. This automation reduces the manual effort and cost of maintaining compliance, helping teams find and fix non-compliant configurations early.

3. Continuous Monitoring and Alerting: Prowler helps you implement a proactive security strategy with automated, continuous monitoring of your cloud environments. You can schedule Prowler to run at regular intervals to detect configuration drift, new misconfigurations, and compliance violations as they happen. Integrating Prowler into CI/CD pipelines helps you shift security left, letting developers find and fix flaws early. Real-time alerts notify security teams of critical issues immediately, which reduces the mean time to detection (MTTD) and allows for a rapid response to potential threats.

4. Customizable Security Checks: Prowler has a flexible architecture that lets you go beyond built-in checks and create custom security policies. You can develop your own checks for unique internal governance rules, specific application requirements, or industry-specific threats. Customization ensures the platform aligns with your organization's risk appetite and security posture. The open framework and access to a community-driven library of security content also help prevent vendor lock-in.

5. Reporting and Integration: Prowler offers reporting and integration features for large-scale operations. The tool generates security reports in various formats (JSON, CSV, HTML), with remediation steps and trend analysis to track security posture improvements. A REST API and webhook support allow for integration with your existing security tools, including SIEMs, ticketing systems, AWS Security Hub, and incident response workflows. This connectivity automates data flow to make sure findings get to the right teams and tools, which helps with data-driven decisions and simplifies the security operations lifecycle.

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Limitations

1. Potential for Alert Fatigue: Prowler’s continuous monitoring can generate a high volume of findings in large or misconfigured environments. Without careful tuning and filtering, security teams can get overwhelmed by alert noise and may overlook critical issues. To implement Prowler effectively, you need a strategy for managing and triaging alerts.

2. Requires Specialized Expertise: Using advanced features like custom check development and CI/CD integration requires a solid understanding of cloud security and scripting. The learning curve can be steep for teams without this expertise, which may limit their ability to use the tool's custom features.

3. Primarily a Configuration Scanner: Prowler is a cloud security posture management (CSPM) tool that identifies misconfigurations and compliance violations. However, Prowler is not a complete security solution on its own. The tool does not perform vulnerability scanning of operating systems or application code (CVEs), nor does it provide runtime threat detection. You will need to integrate Prowler with other security tools for full coverage.

4. Dependency on Cloud Provider APIs: Prowler's functionality depends on the availability and performance of cloud provider APIs from platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP. Any API changes, rate limiting, or service disruptions from the cloud providers can impact the tool's ability to perform scans, which could lead to incomplete security assessments.

5. Scalability and Data Management: Managing and analyzing the large amount of data Prowler generates in enterprise environments can be challenging. If you have hundreds of accounts, you may need to send the output to a SIEM or data analytics platform to correlate findings, track remediation, and generate high-level reports.

Getting Started:

1. Prerequisites:

- Git

- Docker (for Prowler App) or Python (for CLI)

2. Installation (CLI):

Clone the repository:

 git clone https://github.com/prowler-cloud/prowler

Navigate to the directory:

 cd prowler

3. Running a Basic Scan with CLI (Example for AWS):

- Ensure your cloud provider credentials are configured (e.g., ~/.aws/credentials for AWS).

- Run Prowler:

./prowler aws

4. Prowler App (Docker Compose, Recommended for UI):

Download the Docker Compose files:

curl -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prowler-cloud/prowler/refs/heads/master/docker-compose.yml

curl -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prowler-cloud/prowler/refs/heads/master/.env

Start the services:

 docker compose up -d

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