Best Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) Software

There are three ways cloud security posture management works to offer protection:

1. Visibility: Enterprise CSPMs provide visibility into your cloud assets and configurations to discover misconfigurations, changes in policy or metadata, and more. They also help your organization manage all of these policies through the use of a centralized console.

2. Manages and remediates: A CSPM eliminates security risks and accelerates the delivery process by comparing cloud application configurations to industry and organizational benchmarks so that violations can be identified and remediated. A CSPM also reduces human error that could increase your risk of costly breaches.

3. Identifies new potential threats: CSPMs proactively detect threats across the application development lifecycle by monitoring your cloud environments for inappropriate access and anomalies that may indicate malicious activity.

A CSPM is necessary for discovering and automatically remediating threats, misconfigurations, misuse, and compliance violations in public clouds. Because misconfigurations in the cloud are one of the most common causes of data breaches, CSPM tools come forth as the clear solution to bringing organizations peace of mind.

CSPMs are typically used by organizations that have adopted a cloud-first strategy and want to extend their cloud best practices to hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments. However, a CSPM is recommended for all enterprises, big or small. CSPMs are beneficial for all organizations because traditional security doesn’t work in the cloud since there is no perimeter to protect, manual processes cannot occur with the necessary scale or speed, and the lack of centralization makes visibility extremely difficult to achieve.

By leveraging the potential of a CSPM, organizations can uncover:

• Data storage exposed to public
• Lack of encryption
• Permission errors
• Misconfigurations
• Missing multi-factor authentication
• Infrequent encryption key rotation

A CWPP, otherwise known as a cloud workload protection platform, is an agent-based solution that helps address the unique requirements of server workload protection. A CWPP offers network segmentation, traffic visibility, and firewalling, anti-malware scanning and system integrity management, and application control, along with log management, monitoring, and much more. Some of the major benefits of a CWPP are that it scales easily, provides threat and data protection across the board, and leverages user workflows by synthesizing them into an ongoing continuum. The main differences between CSPM and CWPP are that CSPMs work to prevent software configuration vulnerabilities, while CWPPs perform security functions across a plethora of environments. In addition, while a CSPM is primarily used to identify vulnerable cloud configuration settings, CWPPs manage cloud vulnerabilities.

While both CSPMs and SSPMs (SaaS security posture management solutions) evaluate security posture, CSPMs focus on cloud services [like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and other Cloud Service Provider (CSP) infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) environments], and SSPMs focus on SaaS applications. CSPMs analyze entire cloud deployments at multiple levels of the computing stack and can scan IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, containers, and serverless code. CSPM tools also have some capabilities that SSPM tools do not have, such as incident response and vulnerability detection.

CSPM tools offer several benefits, including:

• Unified visibility: CSPMs work to stop accidental vulnerabilities by providing unified visibility across multi-cloud environments. This eliminates the need to check multiple consoles and normalize data from multiple vendors.

• Detects hidden threats: Through its continuous scans of the entire infrastructure, CSPM uncovers hidden threats, enabling faster detection, which results in shorter time to remediation.

• Single console: With a CSPM, all security group policies across accounts, regions, projects, and virtual networks can be managed through a single console.

• Reduced number of alerts: CSPMs reduce the number of alerts because they focus on the areas attackers are most likely to exploit; vulnerabilities are prioritized based on the environment; and vulnerable code is prevented from reaching production.

• Data risk assessment: With a CSPM, you can easily spot potential data risks that could be caused by human error, such as vulnerabilities caused by developers attempting to launch a new application or virtual machines that could leave the organization’s network exposed. If a CSPM solution is in place, data risks in cloud environments can be proactively identified and mitigated.

• Account permissions: CSPMs continuously monitor account privileges. If a user accesses a resource that is not permitted in their department or job role, then it will be flagged instantly and prevented.

• Enforced governance: Having a CSPM can help enforce governance everywhere and alleviate pressure for security and dev teams.

• Compliance: A CSPM can evaluate your cloud security posture against common compliance frameworks and flag potential vulnerabilities. It also provides on-demand and audit-ready reports that span multiple data sources.

• Automatic remediation of misconfigurations: A CSPM sends reports and provides recommended solutions to fix a detected misconfiguration. In some instances, they automatically remedy the misconfiguration, which ensures that any potential vulnerability is immediately patched and the risk of exploitation is removed.

When selecting a CSPM solution, look for one with the following features:

• Follows a central policy system
• Interactive dashboard
• Easy to use
• User-friendly interface
• Straightforward setup
• Risk identification
• Incident response
• Improved efficiency and collaboration
• Enables users to refuse any critical operations based on the roles assigned to them
• Users can view the inventory of the servers across multiple accounts
• Automatic cloud advancement tools to update users' data
• Scans and checks data regularly to ensure that your system remains secured
• Regular backups and updates
• Integrated data security and entitlement controls
• Integration with third-party systems
• Seamless integration with DevOps pipeline stages
• Tools to track activities in real time
• Limited manual intervention to solve issues at the earliest
• Ability to produce configurable, detailed reporting
• Granular controls
• Ability to assess cloud service provider settings and asset configurations accurately