What is CSPM?

Cloud security posture management (CSPM) is the process of monitoring cloud-based systems and infrastructures for risks and misconfigurations.

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CSPM defined

Cloud security posture management (CSPM) identifies and remediates risk by automating visibility, uninterrupted monitoring, threat detection, and remediation workflows to search for misconfigurations across diverse cloud environments/infrastructure, including:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Software as a Service (Saas)
Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Risk visualization and assessments are only two small parts of what CSPM can do for you. CSPM tools also perform incident responses, remediation recommendation, compliance monitoring, and DevOps integration to hybrid and multi-cloud environments/infrastructures. Some CSPM solutions help security teams to proactively connect weak spots in cloud environments and remediate them before a breach happens.

Why is CSPM important?

As the number of people and organizations heading to the cloud increases daily, so does the number of intentional and accidental security risks. And while data breaches are common, the highest percentage of errors still comes from cloud misconfigurations and human error.

Developing threats to cloud security configuration and infrastructures, along with the growing chances for unintended exposure, can take on many guises. A robust and diverse CSPM can defend you and your organization against the following with immediate, automated responses:

Misconfiguration
Legal and regulatory compliance issues
Unauthorized access
Insecure Interfaces/APIs
Account hijacking
Lack of visibility
Lack of clarity in project responsibility timeline
External data sharing
Improper use and configuration of identities and cloud entitlements
Compliance and Regulation Issues
Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks

Benefits of CSPM

Securing your workloads begins with having customized security policies in place for your organization with a thorough, powerful CSPM. A strong CSPM routinely discovers resources deployed across your workloads and assesses them to see whether they meet security best practices. More specifically, these are four key benefits of CSPM:

Give you more control

Manage your cloud security policies and ensure your PaaS services and virtual machines remain compliant with changing regulations. Apply your policies across management groups, subscriptions, and a whole tenant.

Simplify and connect cloud security posture management

Launch and configure CSPM across large-scale environments with AI and automation to rapidly identify threats, expand and increase threat investigation, and help automate remediation. Connecting existing tools into a management system streamlines threat mitigation.

Always be aware

Your CSPM keeps a constant eye on the security state of your cloud resources in different environments, including Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. Automatically assess your assets across servers, containers, databases, and storage. With a comprehensive CSPM, you can watch server workloads to implement customized security and access measures.

Provide help and recommendations

Get insights into your current state and suggestions for improving your security posture. Legal and regulatory compliance changes occur regularly, so having a CSPM that monitors and automatically applies these updates can enhance your security posture and prevent common misconfigurations. CSPM tools can analyze the cloud environment comprehensively to identify risks by connecting the dots. Such measures help security teams to proactively reduce attack surface.

How do CSPM tools work to secure cloud infrastructures?

Cloud misconfiguration happens when the security framework of a cloud infrastructure doesn’t follow a configuration policy, which can directly put an infrastructure’s security at risk. CSPM gives you visibility across cloud environments to quickly detect configuration errors and remediate them through automation.

CSPM tools manage and mitigate risk across an organization’s entire cloud attack surface through:

Visibility
Continuous monitoring
Threat detection and protection
Remediation workflows
Hardening guidance

Any workloads that don’t meet security requirements or identified risks get flagged and placed on a prioritized list of what to fix. Then, you can use these recommendations to reduce the possibility of attacks on each of your resources.

Key CSPM capabilities

To get a complete picture of where your organization’s most critical vulnerabilities are, it’s important to understand that risks are an interrelated chain. When you break down their key features, it becomes clear just how valuable and necessary CSPM tools are. They work interconnectedly by:

Using automation capabilities to make immediate corrections without human involvement.
Monitoring, assessing, and managing IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS platforms in on-premise, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud environments.
Identifying and automatically remediating cloud misconfigurations.
Maintaining policy visibility and reliable enforcement across all providers.
Scanning for updates to regulatory compliance mandates—such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR—and recommending new security requirements.
Performing risk assessments against frameworks and external standards created by organizations such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Scanning your systems for misconfigurations and improper settings, which could leave them vulnerable to attack, and making remediation recommendations.

CSPM vs. other cloud security solutions

CSPM and CIEM

CSPM is essential to keep your organization in compliance with data privacy and industry regulations, while Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) tracks accounts that could result in credential theft. CIEM effectively manages the security risks surrounding entitlements for identities (both human and non-human).

Cloud Infrastructure Security Posture Assessment (CISPA)

CISPAs report on misconfigurations and other security issues. CSPMs also alert you to security issues and have automation at multiple levels, from simple tasks to advanced artificial intelligence processes, to detect and remedy issues that could cause security concerns.

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPPs)

CWPPs only protect workloads, but CSPMs assess entire cloud environments. Also, CSPMs offer more complex automation and guided remediation than CWPPs can provide.

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs)

CASBs monitor infrastructures through firewalls, malware detection, authentication, and data loss prevention. A CSPM performs the same monitoring duties and sets up a policy to define the desired infrastructure. Then, the CSPM verifies that all network activity supports that policy.

CSPM and Network Security

CSPM continuously analyzes the security state of your resources for network security best practices.

CSPM and CNAPP

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) provides a holistic view of cloud security risks in one platform. It encompasses Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Cloud Service Network Security (CSNS), as well as Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP).

CSPM and cloud misconfigurations

A significant cause of cloud security incidents is the improper configuration of both systems and infrastructure in the cloud. These misconfigurations create vulnerabilities by allowing unauthorized access to systems and data and cause other security issues.

The Role of CSPM for Businesses

CSPM can be used to assess and strengthen the security configuration of your cloud resources. Get integrated protection for your multicloud apps and resources with Microsoft Defender for Cloud (formerly Azure Security Center). Defender for Cloud gives you an overview of security across your hybrid and multicloud environment in real time. View recommendations on how to secure your services, receive threat alerts for your workloads, and quickly pass all that information to Microsoft Sentinel (formerly Azure Sentinel) for intelligent threat hunting.

Learn more about Microsoft Security

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Frequently asked questions

CSPM tools manage and mitigate risk across an organization’s entire cloud attack surface.
Whether you are a small to medium size enterprise or an international organization, it is a prudent move to utilize a CSPM tool to help your team protect your cloud environment and maintain robust security standards.
Cloud security posture management is implemented through software or applications.
Automated tools provide visibility into what assets are in the cloud and how they are configured. They will also detect and resolve compliance violations and help your team manage incident response.