Cloud Security Posture Management Defined
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is the practice of continuously monitoring, detecting, and remediating security risks and compliance violations across cloud environments.
CSPM serves as a critical layer of security across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS environments by identifying misconfigurations, providing risk context, and automating remediation efforts.
CSPM tools are important because modern enterprises need to manage, operate, and protect complex and perimeterless multi-cloud IT infrastructures according to the shared responsibility model.
Why is CSPM important?
Most modern businesses are increasingly adopting multi-cloud infrastructures, embarking on digital transformation journeys, and leveraging agile methodologies that prioritize operational efficiency.
While this shift unlocks new possibilities for agility and innovation, it also opens the door to heightened security risks. CSPM tools have become indispensable to address the challenges associated with modern cloud environments:
1. Blind spots in complex multi-cloud environments
Cloud environments, particularly multi-cloud architectures, introduce a level of complexity that can create significant visibility challenges or "blind spots" for security teams. These blind spots can result from the sheer volume of cloud resources, the use of various cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.), or dynamic environments where services, applications, and workloads are constantly being spun up or decommissioned.
CSPM tools consolidate this information, offering a unified view of all cloud assets, configurations, and security risks in a single dashboard, reducing the risk of missing critical issues.
2. Risk context and prioritization
Several cloud security solutions, including older iterations of CSPM tools, can identify misconfigurations in cloud environments. However, a lot of misconfiguration identification can lack context, which is essential in perimeterless environments.
Organizations need robust CSPM to provide them with context around identified misconfigurations so they can prioritize or focus on the misconfigurations that pose a risk to their environment. CSPM can help organizations prioritize cloud misconfigurations and challenges so they become easier to address.
Alert fatigue, which occurs when enterprises receive a barrage of alerts about context-less cloud misconfigurations, can slow down security teams. CSPM can help organizations reduce alert fatigue and only address legitimate cloud concerns.
3. Compliance requirements
Manual compliance processes of the past cannot keep up with rapidly scaling cloud architectures. Businesses require continuous compliance to avoid legal penalties caused by a breach in regulatory frameworks including NIST CFS/SP/800-171/800-53, PCI DSS, SOC2, HiTrust, and CIS benchmarks for cloud vendors such as AWS, Azure, GCP, and Alibaba.
The breach of these regulations can have severe repercussions. Meta was fined $1.3 billion for compliance failures in 2023, Instagram was fined $445 million in 2022, and Amazon was fined $887 million in 2021. Multinational giants may be able to overcome such penalties but most other businesses wouldn’t be able to survive.
Businesses may also need to implement and assess their compliance posture for customized regulatory frameworks. These could be a combination of existing frameworks, duplicates, or unique policies framed by the organization. CSPM tools provide capabilities to do this along with automated mechanisms to assess an enterprise’s entire compliance posture and identify regulatory red flags.
4. Operational efficiency
The nature of traditional security tools can sometimes contradict the approaches of developers in agile IT environments. Traditional identification and remediation of security risks can be slow and may struggle to keep up in a high-octane dev environment.
CSPM can help organizations bridge the gap between operational velocity and robust cybersecurity by baking in security earlier on in the development lifecycle (aka 'shift left'). If your security team can give developers the context, prioritization, and specific remediation guidance they need to fix issues on their own, you get to have your cake and eat it too (shipping code fast and securely!).
How do CSPM tools work?
CSPM is a robust cloud security solution that can provide companies with many advantages. But how does exactly it help secure cloud environments?
When describing how CSPM tools work, a typical approach can be broken down into several key steps:
1. Discovery and visibility
Asset discovery: The first step involves identifying and cataloging all cloud resources, services, and configurations within the environment. This covers everything from compute instances and databases to identity configurations and storage buckets. CSPMs typically use APIs and native integrations to gather information from cloud providers.
Real-time mapping: Continuous scanning ensures that newly created resources are automatically added to the inventory, creating a full, up-to-date map of all resources and security configurations.
End-to-end visibility: CSPM tools give a complete view of the cloud environment, allowing security teams to see how different services are connected and configured. This visibility helps detect misconfigurations, open ports, or unused services that might go unnoticed.
2. Risk assessment and prioritization
Risk identification: Once assets are discovered, the tool assesses their security posture by comparing configurations against established security policies and best practices.
Contextual risk analysis: Instead of treating every misconfiguration equally, a modern CSPM will assess risk based on factors like:
Exposure: Is the resource accessible from the internet?
Sensitivity: Does the resource contain sensitive data or critical services?
Potential impact: What would happen if this resource were compromised?
Risk prioritization: Issues are ranked based on the level of risk they pose to the organization, helping security teams prioritize what to address first. For example, an unencrypted public-facing storage bucket is flagged as a critical issue due to its exposure and attack path to sensitive data.
3. Remediation
Remediation guidance: After identifying risks, CSPM solutions provide detailed recommendations on how to fix them. For example, it might suggest tightening IAM permissions, closing open ports, or applying encryption to sensitive data.
Automated remediation: Most solutions allow for automated fixes, where security configurations can be adjusted without manual intervention. For instance, automating the closing of open security groups or enforcing encryption standards can greatly reduce the risk window.
Integration with devOps: CSPMs can also integrate with devops workflows, ensuring that insecure configurations are identified and remediated before deployment. For example, misconfigured infrastructure-as-code templates can be flagged and corrected automatically before being deployed.
4. Compliance and reporting
Compliance audits: CSPM tools help organizations maintain compliance by regularly checking cloud configurations against regulatory standards such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, or internal security policies. Most will automatically identify areas where the environment is non-compliant, reducing the burden on manual audits.
Customizable compliance policies: Organizations can tailor policies to specific regulatory requirements or industry standards. This allows for flexibility depending on regional or business-specific compliance needs.
Automated reporting: Security tools generate detailed reports that show compliance levels and the steps taken to address violations. CSPM dashboards provide a snapshot of the overall security posture, compliance status, and risk mitigation efforts.
Audit trail: Many tools also provide an audit trail, documenting security changes and remediation actions for future reference, useful for compliance or incident investigations.
5. Continuous monitoring
Real-time threat detection: Once all critical issues have been addressed, continuous monitoring ensures that new issues or misconfigurations are immediately detected. This includes monitoring for unauthorized changes, newly introduced vulnerabilities, or deviations from established security baselines.
Alerting and notifications: When an issue is detected, the tool sends real-time alerts to security teams, ensuring that threats are addressed promptly. Alerts are prioritized based on the severity of the issue and potential risk to critical assets.
6. Integration with boader security stack
Unified security management: Cloud security tools often integrate with a broader set of security solutions, such as cloud-native application protection platforms (CNAPP), to provide a unified approach to securing the entire cloud ecosystem. By combining security information from multiple tools (e.g., workload protection, identity management, and vulnerability scanning), the security team gains a more holistic view.
Identity-centric security: Most CSPMs integrate with cloud identity and access management (IAM) solutions to ensure that identity risks, such as over-permissioning or identity sprawl, are managed and reduced. This is particularly important as misconfigured identities are often a leading cause of cloud breaches.
Automation across tools: Through integrations with other cloud security tools (e.g., DevSecOps pipelines, SIEM systems), these solutions ensure automated detection and remediation across the entire cloud environment. For example, a detected misconfiguration can trigger automated actions in other security systems to minimize exposure.
Comprehensive cloud protection: When integrated into a broader CNAPP framework, the tool covers not only cloud infrastructure but also workloads, containers, and serverless functions. This allows organizations to secure cloud-native applications at every layer.
These steps showcase how a well-designed CSPM can provide continuous visibility, risk assessment, automated remediation, and compliance management. When integrated with a broader security stack, these tools contribute to a unified, automated, and proactive security approach for cloud environments.
What are the benefits of CSPM?
As we've explored CSPM solutions and their challenges, the benefits may already seem clear. But if you're still not sold, let's outline the key benefits of posture management tools:
1. Enhanced Visibility
CSPM tools provide comprehensive visibility into cloud environments, helping organizations track and monitor cloud resources, configurations, and data flows. As cloud infrastructure grows more complex, visibility becomes essential for understanding how assets are deployed, how they interact, and where potential vulnerabilities lie.
With a clear view of their entire cloud architecture, organizations can quickly identify misconfigurations or risky practices, preventing breaches before they occur. This enhanced visibility also helps detect shadow IT and unauthorized use of cloud services, ensuring a more secure cloud infrastructure.
2. Reduced Cloud Risks
One of the core advantages of CSPM is its ability to identify and mitigate security risks unique to cloud environments. By continuously scanning cloud configurations and analyzing them against security benchmarks and best practices, CSPM tools reduce the risk of misconfigurations, overly permissive access policies, and unprotected data storage.
Automated alerts and real-time monitoring allow organizations to quickly address potential threats before they become breaches. By actively managing and remediating these risks, CSPM significantly lowers the chances of costly security incidents in the cloud.
3. Improved Compliance Posture
CSPM helps organizations stay compliant with regulatory requirements and industry standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and more. These tools automate the monitoring of cloud configurations, ensuring they meet the necessary security benchmarks for compliance.
Through continuous assessments, CSPM provides detailed audit trails and reports that simplify compliance audits and help organizations prove their adherence to required standards. This proactive approach not only reduces the risk of fines and legal repercussions but also strengthens customer trust by demonstrating a strong commitment to security.
4. Faster Remediation
When security issues or misconfigurations are detected, CSPM tools enable faster remediation through automated remediation workflows. Rather than manually identifying and resolving every cloud security issue, CSPM can integrate with remediation workflows to quickly fix vulnerabilities or improper settings.
In some cases, CSPM can automatically revert cloud settings to secure configurations or alert security teams to take action immediately. This rapid response capability helps minimize the window of exposure, drastically reducing the potential impact of a breach or attack.
The Definitive 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.
Download Guide
Modern vs legacy CSPM
The evolution from legacy to modern CSPM reflects a shift from reactive, compliance-focused cloud security to a proactive, real-time, risk-based approach. As cloud environments have grown complex and vital to business, CSPM has had to evolve.
The table below expands on the specific feature differences between modern and legacy CSPM tools:
| Features | Modern CSPM | Legacy CSPM |
|---|---|---|
| Compliance Standards and Custom Frameworks | Yes | Yes |
| Near Realtime Configuration Evaluation | Yes | Yes |
| Agentless Cloud Workload Scanning | Yes | No |
| Contextual Cloud Risk Assessment | Yes | No |
| Offline Workload Scanning | Yes | No |
| Agentless and Contextual Vulnerability Detection | Yes | No - requires agent |
| Agentless and Contextual Secure Use of Secrets | Yes | No - requires an agent and cannot identify lateral movement |
| Agentless and Contextual Malware Detection | Yes | No - requires an agent installed on the workload and manual correlation |
| Data Security Posture Management | Yes | No |
| Kubernetes Security Posture Management | Yes | No |
| Effective Network Analysis | Yes | No |
| Attack Path Analysis | Yes | No |
| Effective Identity Analysis | Yes | No |
| Multi-hop lateral movement | Yes | No |
| CI/CD Scanning | Yes | No |
| Comprehensive RBAC Support | Yes | No |
CSPM vs other security solutions
Cloud security has become an alphabet soup of acronyms. It can be tough to remember what each stands for and how they differ. The following are comparisons of CSPM and other popular security tools.
What is the difference between CSPM and CASB?
Cloud access security brokers (CASB) are mechanisms to implement security policies and controls in cloud environments. CSPM focuses on identifying and remediating cloud misconfigurations.
What is the difference between CSPM and CWPP?
Cloud workload protection platform (CWPP) is designed to protect specific workloads running in the cloud, such as virtual machines, containers, applications, and serverless functions. CSPM looks at cloud resource misconfigurations, while CWPP looks at workloads. Learn more ->
What is the difference between CSPM and cloud security?
Cloud Security is a broad term that encompasses the entire set of practices, tools, and policies used to secure cloud environments. (CSPM) is a specific solution within the cloud security ecosystem that focuses on monitoring and improving the security posture of cloud configurations.
What is the difference between CSPM and CNAPP?
Cloud native application protection platform (CNAPP) is a unified platform that brings together traditionally disparate cloud security solutions. A modern CSPM solution is typically part of a greater unified CNAPP platform. Learn more ->
What is the difference between CSPM and CIEM?
Cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) helps businesses analyze and manage cloud entitlements across their IT environments. CSPM focuses on cloud resources misconfigurations rather than identities and entitlements.
What's the difference between CSPM and DSPM?
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) focuses on discovering, monitoring, and securing sensitive data across various environments, including on-premises, cloud, and SaaS. DSPM tools discover and classify sensitive data, monitor data access and movement, identify data security risks, and ensure compliance with data protection regulations. CSPM is primarily concerned with the security and compliance of cloud infrastructure, continuously monitoring for misconfigurations and security risks within cloud environments. Learn more ->
What's the difference between CSPM and SIEM?
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools focus on real-time analysis of security alerts generated by applications and network hardware. SIEM tools collect and aggregate log data from multiple sources, correlate and analyze this data to identify security threats, provide real-time alerts and notifications, and facilitate incident response and forensic investigations.
While CSPM deals with the security configurations and compliance of cloud infrastructure, SIEM provides comprehensive visibility into security events across an organization’s IT environment, detecting and responding to security incidents in real time.
What analyst firms say about CSPM
Gartner
Gartner's view on CSPM is integrated into their broader perspective on CNAPP. Key strategic planning assumptions and market directions include:
Consolidation of CWPP and CSPM: By 2025, 60% of enterprises are expected to consolidate their Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) and CSPM capabilities to a single vendor, up from 25% in 2022. This trend reflects the need for integrated solutions that can provide comprehensive security and compliance management across cloud environments.
Integrated CNAPP Offerings: By 2025, 75% of new CSPM purchases will be part of an integrated CNAPP offering. CNAPPs provide a unified set of security capabilities, including CSPM, to protect cloud-native applications throughout their lifecycle, from development to production.
Multi-Cloud Adoption: By 2025, 80% of enterprises will adopt multiple public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings, including multiple Kubernetes offerings. CSPM tools must therefore be versatile and capable of managing security across diverse cloud environments.
Vendor Consolidation: By 2026, 80% of enterprises will consolidate security tooling for the lifecycle protection of cloud-native applications to three or fewer vendors, down from an average of 10 in 2022. This consolidation aims to reduce complexity and improve the integration and effectiveness of security solutions.
Forrester
Forrester's stance on CSPM emphasizes its critical role in enhancing cloud security by detecting and responding to configuration drifts and potential threats in real-time. They highlight CSPM as a dynamically evolving segment within the cloud workload security (CWS) space, essential for managing the security of compute, storage, and network resources across cloud environments.
KuppingerCole
KuppingerCole's view of CSPM emphasizes the importance of continuous monitoring and automation to manage cloud security risks effectively. They highlight CSPM's role in providing visibility into cloud service configurations, identifying vulnerabilities, and ensuring compliance with regulatory standards and organizational policies. KuppingerCole identified the leading vendors based on the strength of their products, market presence, and innovation in their CSPM Leadership Compass.
Wiz's approach to CSPM
Enterprises can find it overwhelming to navigate the cloud security solutions market and choose optimal solutions. CSPM can provide numerous advantages, but companies may be confused about whether it will suit their particular needs and use cases.
The Wiz CSPM solution offers real-time scanning to detect misconfigurations as soon as they happen, identifying the event that triggered the misconfiguration and enabling you to immediately trigger an automated remediation flow (such as automatically adjusting access control settings to restrict public access).
Schedule a demo of the product for an opportunity to chat with Wiz experts, which can help organizations make an informed decision about their cloud security posture management.