Cloud identities have become the new attack vector of choice, and managing them either manually or with traditional IAM is a battle you’re bound to lose. Every service account, federated user, and cross-account role in your environment represents potential lateral movement opportunities for attackers who've already gained initial access.
According to IBM's 2025 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, identity-based attacks now comprise 30% of all intrusions, fueled by an 84% surge in infostealer malware campaigns. Manual reviews that might have worked in simpler times now fail spectacularly under the weight of scale.
The cost implications? They extend far beyond potential breach damages. Excessive permissions create compliance headaches, slow down development velocity due to security friction, and consume valuable engineering cycles on manual access reviews that never quite catch everything.
Across the globe, organizations are discovering that the traditional approach of "grant first, audit later" is a recipe for disaster in cloud environments. And to that end, cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) has evolved from a nice-to-have into an absolute necessity for organizations running workloads in the cloud.
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CIEM vs. IAM
Cloud infrastructure entitlement management brings about a fundamental shift in how we think about identity security in the cloud. Unlike traditional IAM systems that focus on governing access through policies and authentication, CIEM analyzes and enforces least privilege at scale by understanding the effective permissions of every identity in your environment.
Traditional IAM was designed for relatively static, on-premises environments where identities were primarily human users. But today's cloud environments are heavily dominated by non-human identities that can number in the thousands, like service accounts, lambda functions, container workloads, and cross-account roles. And these non-human identities often inherit permissions through complex chains of group memberships, resource policies, and trust relationships that make manual analysis virtually impossible.
While IAM governs who can access what through policies and authentication mechanisms, CIEM continuously analyzes the actual blast radius of every identity. It maps out toxic permission combinations, tracks dormant identities, and identifies privilege escalation paths that could be exploited by attackers who've already gained initial access.
The 3 pillars of effective CIEM
The CIEM market has matured rapidly, but not every solution out there delivers on its promises. The difference between a tool that gathers dust and one that transforms your security posture comes down to three fundamental capabilities that work together to deliver real results:
1. Visibility & context
The foundation of any effective CIEM strategy starts with comprehensive visibility into every identity in your environment. This means mapping not just the obvious human users and service accounts, but also federated users from external identity providers, cross-account roles that span organizational boundaries, temporary tokens generated by CI/CD pipelines, and service principals that power your workloads.
CIEM platforms achieve this through agentless identity discovery that can scan across major cloud environments without ever needing software installation on your resources. The breakthrough comes with graph-based analytics that map not just individual permissions, but the complex inheritance chains and role relationships that determine what each identity can actually access.
Critical capabilities in this pillar include…
Identifying unused or overly broad permissions across human and machine identities
Mapping complex permission inheritance chains across roles, groups, and trust relationships
Visualizing access paths to sensitive resources, even across accounts and clouds
Surfacing identities with broad access to public or critical assets that pose a blast radius risk
2. Risk-based prioritization
Having visibility is a great starting point. But it’s just that—a starting point. The real value comes from understanding which identity risks are actually exploitable in your specific environment. This pillar focuses on contextual risk assessment that goes much farther than simple policy analysis to understand real-world attack scenarios.
Effective risk prioritization flags toxic combinations where seemingly innocent permissions become dangerous when combined. The platform you pick should:
Highlight identities with public exposure or overly broad privileges
Prioritize risks based on blast radius and lateral movement potential
Correlate identity risks with real-time security findings like vulnerabilities or data exposure
Spot shadow admin accounts that have quietly accumulated too many privileges over time
Flag unused yet over-provisioned services that expand your attack surface
3. Remediation & governance
The third pillar transforms insights into action through automated remediation workflows that enforce least privilege with minimal operational friction. This includes…
Auto-suggested policy changes that remove unused permissions
Automated least-privilege suggestions that account for usage context and operational impact — helping teams reduce access without breaking deployments
Integration with development workflows through pull requests and ticketing systems
Key capabilities include:
Automated least-privilege policy suggestions based on actual access needs
Context-aware recommendations that preserve functionality (e.g., CI/CD deployment permissions)
Integration with ticketing or remediation pipelines to streamline enforcement
Ongoing permission drift detection to alert on reintroduced risk
Evaluation criteria for buyers
The right CIEM solution should do more than inventory permissions — it should help security teams understand identity risks in the context of real threats. When evaluating CIEM platforms, look for these key capabilities:
1. Agentless identity discovery across multi-cloud environments
Modern CIEM platforms offer agentless visibility into every identity in AWS, Azure, and GCP — including IAM users, service accounts, cross-account roles, federated users, and ephemeral identities — without installing software or introducing operational friction.
2. Effective permission and access path analysis
Static policy analysis isn’t enough. The best solutions determine effective permissions by analyzing trust relationships, group memberships, and inherited policies to reveal the true blast radius of each identity.
3. Graph-based modeling of cloud identity relationships
Leading platforms use graph technology to visualize how identities relate to workloads, networks, and data. This enables teams to trace potential attack paths, identify privilege escalation routes, and map toxic combinations that aren’t obvious from policy files alone.
4. Risk-based prioritization using cloud context
CIEM tools should evaluate identity risk through the lens of real-world exposure — factoring in public accessibility, access to sensitive data, exploitability of connected assets, and potential lateral movement. Prioritization should be contextual, not just rule-based.
5. Identity threat detection and response
CIEM isn’t just about posture — it also plays a role in detection. Some platforms go further by correlating identity risks with threat activity, such as anomalous behavior, exposed secrets, or unusual API calls, to surface active identity threats before they lead to compromise.
6. Least-privilege enforcement and policy remediation
Strong CIEM platforms recommend right-sizing policies based on usage data, and support least-privilege enforcement without breaking critical workflows. Look for features like policy simulation, just-in-time access workflows, and integration into ticketing or DevOps pipelines.
7. Integrated cloud risk context
Identity is one part of the puzzle. The most effective CIEM solutions are embedded within platforms that also monitor vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, data exposure, and runtime behavior — enabling a unified view of cloud risk and more accurate prioritization.
8. Lifecycle governance and drift detection
Some platforms help detect identity drift — when permissions accumulate over time — and alert on zombie accounts, stale roles, or unused service principals that expand the attack surface.
A CIEM platform’s real value lies in what it helps you do — not just what it shows you. The strongest tools combine deep entitlement visibility, contextual risk modeling, and active threat detection to reduce the attack surface and stop identity-based threats in their tracks.
The top 7 CIEM platforms compared
Now that we've established what makes a CIEM platform effective, it's time to see how the market leaders perform in practice. From cloud-native startups to enterprise security giants, each platform takes a different approach to solving the identity challenge.
G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5 ⭐ (702 reviews)
Snapshot: Cloud-native CIEM with unified security context across infrastructure, identities, and data
Key strengths:
Graph-based attack path analysis: Maps toxic permission chains across AWS, Azure, and GCP
Agentless, multi-cloud discovery: Scans cloud environments in minutes without deploying agents, correlating identity risks with vulnerabilities, exposed secrets, and misconfigured network rules
Context-aware remediation: Auto-generates least-privilege policies while considering dependencies, like ensuring CI/CD pipelines retain necessary permissions during deployment windows
CNAPP integration: Enriches CIEM insights with workload security data, prioritizing identities that can access crown jewel resources and reside in vulnerable containers or exposed VMs
Unlike most CIEM tools that operate in isolation, Wiz connects the dots across identity, data, and cloud infrastructure. It doesn’t just tell you who is overprivileged — it shows you why it matters, like whether that identity can access a vulnerable VM storing sensitive data.
With Wiz, identity risks aren’t just theoretical. They’re prioritized based on real exposure paths and correlated with runtime context to accelerate response.
Best for: Teams that need a single platform to manage cloud entitlements and infrastructure risks, especially those with complex multi-cloud deployments where identity is the primary attack vector
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 ⭐ (302 reviews)
Snapshot: Azure-native CIEM with growing multi-cloud support; tightly integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem
Key strengths:
Azure AD deep integration: Automatically maps Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) users to cloud roles, highlighting federated identities with excessive permissions in Azure SQL or Key Vault
Compliance-driven prioritization: Flags effective permissions violating the Microsoft cloud security benchmark (MCSB) or GDPR, with prebuilt templates for SOC 2 and NIST
Unified Microsoft 365 dashboard: Correlates CIEM alerts with Defender XDR incidents, like a service principal with broad permissions suddenly accessing SharePoint data
Best for: Microsoft-centric organizations with primarily Azure workloads who want to leverage existing investments
CyberArk Cloud Entitlements Manager (Secure Cloud Access)
G2 rating: 5 out of 5 ⭐ (5 reviews)
Snapshot: Privileged access management (PAM) leader extending governance to cloud entitlements
Key strengths:
Just-in-time (JIT) access: Grants temporary permissions for tasks like debugging production issues, avoiding standing privileges for AWS admins or Kubernetes service accounts
Policy-as-code integration: Exports least-privilege IAM policies to Terraform or CloudFormation, embedding governance into DevOps pipelines
Best for: Enterprises with existing CyberArk investments (e.g., Vault) that want to eliminate standing cloud privileges and apply PAM principles to non-human identities
Ermetic (now a Tenable company)
G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5 ⭐ (30 reviews)
Snapshot: Identity-first platform merging CIEM with CSPM for full-stack cloud risk analysis
Key strengths:
AWS IAM Expertise: Detects risky combinations like iam:PassRole + lambda:CreateFunction, which attackers exploit to hijack workloads
Behavioral anomaly detection: Flags dormant service accounts suddenly listing EC2 instances or accessing cross-account roles
Shift-left policy enforcement: Blocks overly permissive roles in CI/CD pipelines via GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps extensions
Post-acquisition edge: Integrates with Tenable’s exposure management platform to prioritize identities exposed via unpatched CVEs (e.g., a developer with SSH access to a vulnerable VM)
Best for: DevOps teams that need to enforce least privilege in AWS-heavy environments while maintaining developer velocity
Palo Alto Prisma Cloud (now Cortex)
G2 rating: 4.1 out of 5 ⭐ (93 reviews)
Snapshot: CIEM embedded into a broader CNAPP; ideal for network-centric security teams
Key Strengths:
Network-aware risk scoring: Prioritizes identities that can access public-facing RDS instances or modify security groups
Queryable entitlements: Uses Resource Query Language (RQL) for easy queries (for example, “Which GCP service accounts can write to BigQuery datasets tagged as PII”).
JIT access with zero standing privileges: Grants time-bound permissions via Okta or Azure AD Conditional Access policies
Best for: Palo Alto customers who want to consolidate cloud security tools, particularly those using Prisma SASE or Cortex XDR
SailPoint Cloud Access Management
G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 ⭐ (97 reviews)
Snapshot: Identity governance veteran bringing certification workflows to cloud entitlements
Pillar coverage:
Key strengths:
Certification campaigns: Auto-generates access reviews for AWS roles or Azure resource groups, with attestation trails for auditors
Lifecycle automation: Deprovisions permissions when employees leave or projects end, reducing “zombie” service accounts
Best for: Regulated industries (finance, healthcare) needing to certify cloud access quarterly and maintain audit-ready trails
Authomize (now a Delinea company)
G2 rating: 4.5 out of 5 ⭐ (1 review)
Snapshot: CIEM + SaaS identity governance for unified access reviews across cloud and apps
Key strengths:
SaaS + IaaS coverage: Correlates AWS roles with SaaS app permissions (e.g., “Does this EC2 admin also have write access to Salesforce?”)
Auto-deprovisioning: Removes stale permissions from offboarded employees across Snowflake, GitHub, and Azure AD simultaneously
Anomaly detection: Alerts when a marketing user suddenly gains “admin” rights in AWS or accesses sensitive Confluence pages
Best for: Companies managing hybrid SaaS/IaaS environments that need periodic access certifications for ISO 27001 or SOX
Making the right choice
Wiz cuts through the complexity that bogs down most CIEM solutions. We combine agentless identity discovery,graph-based analytics that map not just individual permissions, but the relationships between identities, resources, and trust boundaries — revealing the true blast radius of every identity.
Instead of thousands of overprivileged identities and alert fatigue, you get a clear view of which permission paths actually matter — and how to fix them fast, without breaking things.
Want to see it in action? Schedule a 30-minute walkthrough and learn how Wiz can secure every identity in your cloud — from human users to ephemeral service accounts.
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