What is Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)?

While public clouds provide several benefits, their growth has exposed businesses to security vulnerabilities. A profusion of dynamic and dispersed settings has resulted from the widespread usage of cloud services. It is tough for security teams to keep up with the size, rate of change, and "spread" over various public clouds. In addition, cloud expertise is in limited supply. 50% of enterprises had infrastructure as a service (IaaS) storage services, network segments, apps, or APIs directly exposed to the public internet in 2021, according to Gartner research. Almost the majority of these setups had misconfigurations as a consequence of human error. By 2020, according to Gartner, 95% of cloud security vulnerabilities will be due to misconfiguration or human error. A single setup error might expose to the public internet hundreds or thousands of systems or very sensitive data.

Numerous organizations are unaware of the types, quantities, and configurations of cloud-based resources. Consequently, major misconfigurations sometimes go undiscovered for days, weeks, or even longer, and securing cloud services and applications may be challenging.

These threats and obstacles motivate firms to implement a Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) strategy. CSPM is a key discipline that assists enterprises in detecting and automatically resolving threats, misconfigurations, abuse, and compliance issues in public clouds.

CSPM tools examine an IaaS or PaaS infrastructure against cloud security best practices and ensure that all cloud settings adhere to compliance requirements, such as GCP, and Azure benchmarks as well as PCI, NIST, and HIPAA frameworks. CSPM solutions aim to assist in the resolution of cloud configuration and security concerns, mostly via automated detection and remediation.

In this article, we will cover the following topics:

• What is the Meaning of Cloud Security Posture Management?

• What are the Features of CSPM?

• What are the Use Cases of CSPM?

• Why Do You Need Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)?

• Why Do Cloud Misconfigurations Occur?

• What are the Advantages of Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)?

• What are the Drawbacks of Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)?

• How Does Cloud Security Posture Management Work?

• What are the Best Practices for CSPM?

• What are the Differences Between CSPM and Other Cloud Security Solutions?

• What are the Best CSPM Providers?

What is the Meaning of Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)?

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is an automated software solution that identifies misconfiguration problems and compliance concerns in cloud infrastructures, such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS). CSPM is used for risk visualization and assessment, compliance monitoring, incident response, and DevOps integration.

CSPM works in the background, assessing the cloud for compliance risks and configuration vulnerabilities, rather than forcing security teams to manually verify their clouds for security threats. It consistently applies cloud security best practices to hybrid, multi-cloud, and container systems.

The majority of CSPM systems can scan multi-cloud settings and provide a consolidated picture of the security status of all cloud services. This capability is vital since many firms use many cloud services, which raises the risk of misconfiguration and makes manual management more difficult.

Some CSPM systems notify the cloud client when a security risk must be remedied, while other, more complex CSPM products employ robotic process automation (RPA) to automatically resolve concerns.

What are the Features of CSPM?

The primary capabilities of Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools are explained below:

• Threat Detection: Threats to cloud data security originate from a variety of internal and external routes. Businesses should cover not only the typical problem of misconfigurations but also defend against legitimate individuals abusing data, let alone hostile insider threats. External threats consist of malicious actors trying to utilize stolen credentials, cryptomining, ransomware, and other malware and hacking tools.

  Insider threats and stolen credentials are often not found until after a breach has occurred. SOC(Security Operation Center) teams must then manually go through logs in an attempt to identify the attacker. Creating a baseline of analytics on user activity and then continuously monitoring that behavior aid in identifying any abnormalities and alerting SOC teams before any potential harm.

  Organizations utilize a multitude of cloud security products to uncover and defend against malware and other threats, which exacerbates the threat detection issue. The plethora of instruments might overload the SOC with warnings and provide little information about the severity of each. Multiple cyber threat intelligence sources are combined by CSPM products so that SOC teams see threat intelligence data across all cloud environments. Frequently, CSPM technologies have their own threat intelligence sources, which improves the capability to prioritize attacks that represent the greatest danger to the enterprise.

• Visibility: In contrast to data centers, visibility into the dispersed resources, applications, and data in cloud systems, as well as their real-time security and compliance posture, is very challenging. CSPM services give consolidated, real-time network visibility across cloud environments by evaluating and standardizing various data sources and generating a comprehensive asset inventory. CSPMs continually find new resources in real-time, monitor current resources, and assess and show security posture in a single location utilizing visuals and tables to enhance comprehension. Not only is it practical to provide insight into several clouds in a single location, but it is also incredibly beneficial for security teams, whose employees seldom have knowledge of more than one public cloud environment.

• Compliance: The cloud is subject to the same privacy, security, and integrity rules as the data center, but demonstrating compliance is far more challenging. Numerous firms are unable to show compliance or pass an audit of cloud systems without experiencing time-consuming, tedious, and expensive procedures, such as preparing and combining several reports. There is fortunately a technique to streamline the compliance procedure. CSPM services can:

  • Evaluate your cloud security posture according to prevalent compliance standards and identify possible compliance problems.
  • Rapidly produce audit-ready reports spanning several data sources
  • Permit SOC teams to analyze audit data for indications of odd user activity or account breach.

• Governance: The data security rules of most organizations are quite transparent. However, development teams often lack security knowledge, making it challenging to adopt and regularly enforce their cloud-based rules. Security operations center (SOC) teams sometimes get hundreds or thousands of security warnings per day from numerous technologies across many clouds, with no context to assist them in prioritizing or resolving concerns.

  Without needing in-depth knowledge of each environment, CSPM technologies assist enterprises in establishing a comprehensive security posture in the cloud across the development lifecycle. After a cloud's overall security posture has been set, CSPM technologies assist in enforcing it across different public clouds. Visibility and monitoring of CSPM rapidly detect security breaches, such as misconfigurations, and often aid in repair by proposing steps security teams should take or even automatically addressing policy violations.

What are the Use Cases of CSPM?

Common use cases of CSPM are as follows:

• Preventing configuration drift by identifying and notifying administrators of configurations deployed outside of security guidelines.

• Assuring ongoing compliance with regulatory standards and security frameworks by giving insight into the security posture of the cloud environment.

• Supporting the Security Operations Center (SOC) by supplying cloud security logs and other data to SOC tools such as Security Information and Event Management (SIEM).

• Developing DevOps guidelines to guarantee that all asset deployments conform to policy requirements.

Why Do You Need Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)?

Cloud misconfigurations are often exploited by threat actors, and as more firms transition to the cloud, more breaches occur. CSPM systems monitor cloud assets and containers, then continually and automatically check for cloud misconfigurations that may result in data breaches. This form of automatic detection aids in the continuing mitigation of cyber threats. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions are helpful to address the following difficulties:

• Misunderstanding the cloud shared responsibility model: The cloud provider is exclusively responsible for the security of the cloud infrastructure's back end. Organizations transitioning to the cloud must take precautions to protect their assets in the cloud, including secure authentication and encryption, as well as event recording. These precautions aid in preventing data breaches and other security problems.

• Issues with public cloud setups: Cloud users must properly design their cloud environment to protect their data and applications. However, not all cloud users understand how to configure federated identity, security logging, and password storage securely. Public cloud infrastructure, for instance, is programmable through application programming interfaces (APIs), and misconfigurations in API operations may expose enterprises to the risk of leaks or breaches.

• Cloud permissions misconfigurations: Misconfigurations are often the result of improper management of several interconnected resources, including Kubernetes, containers, and serverless operations. This is often the result of a lack of insight into data and communication flows throughout the cloud and across cloud services. This prohibits companies from allocating rights to resources in accordance with the principle of least privilege (POLP). This applies to both user and service accounts.

  Gartner recommends CSPM solutions as fundamental to cloud security, stating that almost all successful attacks on cloud services arise from misconfiguration, mismanagement, and user error. Leaders in security and risk management should invest in cloud security posture management methods and technologies to proactively and reactively detect and mitigate these threats.

Why Do Cloud Misconfigurations Occur?

Here are the five most common cloud setup mistakes:

• Disabled MFA: MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) is a secure authentication system that employs the usage of two factors to validate users. These may contain credentials, SSO, OTP, location, biometric data, and a security question. MFA ensures that attackers who have a user's credentials are unable to enter the system.

• Shared Resources Across Accounts: Cross-account access or resource sharing refers to the ability of certain cloud infrastructure administrators to provide user access to a resource located in another account. This method may result in inadvertently granting access to a large number of internal and external users. This setting error might easily result in a data breach.

• Publicly Accessible Resources: Public resources are a desirable target for attackers because they provide an easy entry point into an organization's network and a path to sensitive and mission-critical data. Therefore, setup errors with these resources are more hazardous. Misconfigurations include the use of a wildcard resource-based access policy in the cloud and the reuse of secrets and keys.

• Data Stores Without Encryption Key Protection: Encryption safeguards data storage. Without knowledge of which data resources lack encryption, sensitive data may be available to malicious actors, who may subsequently leak it or exploit it for ransomware.

• Contrary to Best Practices: In addition to the aforementioned flaws, cloud providers and security professionals advise recommended practices for effectively implementing cloud computing in order to prevent error-causing activities. To secure your cloud infrastructure against a breach, it is strongly advised that you adhere to the aforementioned trends, guidelines, and best practices.

What are the Advantages of Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)?

You can protect cloud workloads more effectively and at a larger scale with CSPM than with manual or periodic audits of cloud setups. Multiple advantages are provided by CSPM products to enterprises for safeguarding their cloud infrastructure. With CSPM safeguards in place for your cloud workloads, you get the following benefits:

• Providing Automation and Efficiency in Security: CSPM tools help automate security operations. Rather than manually evaluating cloud setups, then researching and remediating each risk, teams may utilize CSPM technologies to automatically and constantly comb through all of their cloud configurations. In turn, they spot dangers as soon as they emerge, requiring minimum time or effort from human engineers. In certain instances, CSPM tools automate remediation by, for instance, modifying an insecure access control rule to make it more secure or deactivating an outdated user account.

• Reducing Expenses: CSPM tools handle all of the manual labor required by security professionals, such as understanding compliance requirements, reviewing network data storage, API settings, configuration data, etc., identifying vulnerabilities by correlating with compliance regulations, and developing an actionable plan for mitigating risks. This frees up their time and decreases the likelihood of a human mistake.

• Offering Compliance Assurance: By using CSPM solutions, enterprises may enforce and maintain compliance with their cloud-based apps and services in accordance with their industry-specific requirements. By associating mapped vulnerabilities with compliance criteria and developing recommendations, security experts may verify they are in compliance with all applicable laws.

• Increasing Security Measures: Monitoring for misconfigurations is an integral aspect of keeping a healthy security posture and a requirement that is generally acknowledged. Following CSPM suggestions assists enterprises in enhancing their security and mitigating threats.

• Providing Visibility: CSPM technologies give enterprises insight into their cloud assets' settings, workloads, and services. Consequently, they are able to regulate the cloud and its security posture. Typically, visibility is supplied through an intuitive user interface, an intelligent dashboard, and shared reports.

What are the Drawbacks of Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)?

While CSPM is an important cloud security pillar, it should not be the sole weapon in your cloud security armory. CSPM by itself is susceptible to significant constraints. The most significant limitation is that CSPM only identifies security issues in cloud environment settings. It will not warn you of other forms of threats, such as application source code vulnerabilities.

Additionally, CSPM is not a replacement for cloud security monitoring. CSPM helps you stay ahead of risks by identifying them before they are exploited, but it will not notify you of suspicious behavior such as brute-force password assaults or network port scans that might indicate an active attack on your cloud environment.

Lastly, CSPM tools are only as successful as the rules they use to analyze risks, which is why it's crucial to design CSPM policies to your organization's specific requirements. Each sort of business application and data has a unique set of security criteria.

How Does Cloud Security Posture Management Work?

CSPM gives the visibility required to identify cloud-based hazards and risks and aid in their resolution. CSPM aims to aid in the automated protection of cloud environments. CSPM systems identify several cloud concerns, such as inadequate encryption, poor management of encryption keys, and other account permissions and configuration difficulties.

The majority of CSPMs automatically detect configuration data inside your cloud and then analyze the data to look for less secure settings. The majority of CSPM solutions are capable of doing this in a continuous manner, monitoring your settings in real-time and verifying changes as they occur. CSPM tools do these evaluations depending on the security needs of your workload. For instance, if you need to apply specific privacy safeguards to Personally Identifiable Information (PII), you may implement CSPM rules tailored to detect PII and ensure that it conforms with your standards. Most CSPM systems have predefined rules, but you may also tailor them to your organization's specific requirements. How a CSPM solution operates is described below:

• Providing visibility into every cloud-based asset and configuration: CSPM solutions provide a single source of truth throughout the whole cloud ecosystem, automating the detection of assets and misconfigurations, as well as metadata, security, and networking activities. CSPM centralizes the administration of all cloud assets' security policies, including projects, accounts, virtual networks, and regions.

• Reducing overhead and eliminating friction in multi-cloud environments: CSPM solutions provide a cloud-native posture management solution that enables enterprises to centralize visibility and control over all cloud assets. It provides visibility for security and DevOps teams across several cloud environments. This allows teams to prevent hacked assets from spreading across the network, software builds, and application life cycles.

  CSPM links with your current security information and event management (SIEM) system, which provides enhanced visibility and extra insights into misconfigurations and policy breaches. Lastly, integrating CSPM with DevOps toolsets helps provide faster reaction and repair.

• Offering Identification and control of threats: This method detects possible hazards in advance. CSPM systems constantly monitor cloud environments and identify threats in real-time. This aids in detecting malicious activities and illegal access incidents. By concentrating on the regions where threat actors are most likely to strike, CSPM solutions assist in achieving many goals:

  • Reduce risk by identifying policies with excessive latitude
  • Rank vulnerabilities based on severity and cloud environments
  • Reduce risk via continuous monitoring
  • Address compliance requirements for maintaining cloud security measures

• Removing and correcting cloud security risks: Comparing cloud application settings to industry and enterprise benchmarks, CSPM solutions evaluate cloud application setups. This allows rapid discovery and correction of any vulnerabilities that might expose your cloud resources, such as unauthorized changes, misconfigurations, and open ports. This lessens the probability of expensive configuration errors. In addition, CSPM systems monitor data storage locations, confirm that the proper permission levels are in place, and guarantee that database instances responsible for encryption, high availability, and backups are enabled.

What are the Best Practices for CSPM?

Best practices for CSPM implementation are explained below:

• Lock the Cloud Control Plane Down: Locking down the cloud control plane is one of the most effective measures for preventing cloud misconfigurations. The control plane oversees and orchestrates the cloud deployment of a business and is where configuration baselines are stored, therefore you must ensure that only the appropriate individuals have administrative credentials to do certain tasks in your cloud system. Your whole infrastructure is vulnerable to assault if an adversary obtains access to an account with administrator credentials. Consequently, you should implement the following:

  • Limit cloud API access to just those users that need it.
  • Enable MFA for every administrative account
  • Turn off geographical areas and resources that you do not use or intend to utilize.
  • Ensure that Cloud Logging is appropriately set up for all services and users.

• Set Restrictions on Data Sharing: To prevent cloud storage from being disclosed or exploited, security teams must take the following precautions:

  • Monitor all internal storage access patterns in order to minimize too permissive or unnecessary exposed access.
  • Enable robust encryption and key rotation for important cloud storage data.
  • Continually search for public-labeled storage nodes.

• Apply the Least Privileges Principle: In the cloud, weak or wrongly administered identity rules and their associated permissions are a target for attackers. In the cloud, deploying programs, launching new environments, generating temporary projects, etc. occurs at a faster rate. Each of these settings has its own cloud identity with its own set of permissions.

• Conduct Risk Assessments for Cloud Computing: None of the cloud-based activities are one-day evaluations. You will be monitoring the condition of the control plane security controls over time, allowing you to handle any changes that do not adhere to the security rules specified by your business or the best practices you use. Establish a monthly CSPM posture report and be aware of any potential deviations.

• Protect the Perimeter of the Cloud Network: To safeguard the perimeter of our cloud network, you may use (nearly) the same strategies as in our on-premises data centers, such as Security Groups instead of ACLs, WAFs instead of firewalling, and VPCs instead of the actual routing and switching equipment you have. Data center best practices are still applicable in the cloud, such as activating the traffic logs, impeding network access, and continuous monitoring of unusual activity.

• Implement Security Verifications Throughout the Development Process: The process of DevOps pipelines should include security checks. In DevOps pipelines, the rate of development and product delivery may rapidly result in an excessive number of vulnerabilities. This is avoided by integrating automatic vulnerability and policy checks across the whole workflow. Establishing a central repository for deployment automation is a best practice that improves the performance of your CSPM.

  Continuously monitoring security and posture management assists prevent misconfigurations even before software enters testing and production. It facilitates the incorporation of remedial actions in future releases, should difficulties reach production.

• Employ Metrics for Automated Compliance: Implement CSPM systems and procedures that allow automatic resource benchmarking and auditing. This should contain service discovery capabilities that allow additional benchmarking components, such as private or configurable benchmarks created by your team, to identify the environment's assets. The majority of cloud service providers provide benchmarks for evaluating cloud setups. Use vendor-specific recommendations in conjunction with third-party and universal standards.

• Prioritize Problems Based on Risk: Do not begin correcting errors as soon as they are discovered. The sequence in which you discover concerns does not always correspond to the amount of danger posed by each issue. Instead of spending time on small issues, focus on risk levels in a way that enables you to concentrate your efforts on severe problems that have the most potential to damage the application and, by extension, your organization.

  Focus on vulnerabilities that have a major effect on applications and workloads, as well as those that may expose data and assets to the public, when prioritizing concerns. Utilize this approach of priority for all endeavors, including vulnerability management, monitoring, and detection. Once high-priority risks have been mitigated, you may begin to manage lower-priority risks.

• Implement Security Awareness: Not everyone who interacts with the cloud has the proper understanding of what might lead to a major security issue or a little configuration adjustment that will improve their lives. Implementing a security awareness training program assists you in recognizing and avoiding possible attacks that might damage the data and applications of your organization.

• Protect Against Typical Setup Errors: Misconfigurations are among the leading causes of data breaches. To prevent this issue, make careful to take the following precautions:

  • Establish a configuration baseline and monitor deviations
  • Continuously monitor changes and their sources (which settings are changed, when, by whom, and where)

• Defend Against Internal Security Breaches: According to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report, over half of data breaches were caused by internal risks. These include social engineering, data exchange outside the corporation, the use of informal undocumented channels, the use of unapproved devices and applications, corporate device theft, etc. Employees should get ongoing education, briefings, and training in the following areas:

  • Internal rules and processes for security
  • How to react to such approaches
  • The dangers posed by remote employment (using unsecured networks, device theft, etc.)

  It is also essential to do the following actions:

  • Restriction of USB and peripheral usage
  • Enable options for remote wipes
  • Employ robust encryption
  • Continuously check adherence to security rules and procedures
  • Detect and monitor automatically all data types produced across all systems, networks, and applications

• Create Cloud Governance Program: A strong cloud governance program (a collection of rules, regulations, direction, control, and activity monitoring) should strike a careful balance between serving the demands of the users and assuring the application of the toughest and best security policies and procedures. When developing a program for cloud governance, you should:

  • Define target environments (in which environments they apply or not - internal, external, development, testing, production, etc.)
  • Consider measures suggested by The Center for Internet Security - CIS (and more if necessary)
  • Identify any exceptions; what are they? When and for how long does every exception apply? Which consumers?

• Utilize Automation Whenever Feasible: One of the weaker parts is the human element. Complying with standards, regulations, and practices may be difficult and time-consuming, providing potential for human mistakes in cloud security management. Moreover, modern attackers depend heavily on speedier and more automated technologies. To avoid customer misconfiguration, mismanagement, and errors, it is necessary to automate cloud security management wherever feasible.

• Use Secure Coding Guidelines: During the development phases, several issues may be identified and prevented. It is crucial for developers to create safe software by using verified universal coding standards and implementing security parameters from the outset of development. Secure coding standards assist developers in locating, eliminating, and preventing code mistakes that might lead to software security vulnerabilities. OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) is a solid example of a non-profit organization that offers developers tools, resources, education & training, such as an annual standardized application security awareness document.

What are the Differences Between CSPM and Other Cloud Security Solutions?

In this section, we will discuss the key differences between CSPM and other primary kinds of cloud security solutions, like CASB, CISPA, and CWPP. Gartner investigates the distinctions between these services in detail and provides the following summary of their findings:

"CASB, CSPM, and CWPP products provide overlapping sets of capabilities to manage cloud risks, but none of the three groups fulfills all the functions of the others. CSPM is mainly concerned with security assessment and compliance monitoring throughout the IaaS cloud architecture."

What are the Differences Between CSPM and CASB?

CASB and CSPM aren't interchangeable components in the cloud security ecosystem. Because a cloud access security broker (CASB) collaborates with CSPM to implement cloud-based security rules. Specifically, a CASB serves as the point of policy enforcement between various cloud services and the people that utilize them.

CASBs provide security enforcement points between cloud service providers and their customers' networks. Additionally, some CASBs offer mirror proxy functionality for unmanaged endpoints. Before granting access to the network or cloud resources, CASBs check that cloud traffic conforms with industry and organization regulations. Typically, CASBs provide firewalls, authentication, malware detection, and data loss prevention, while CSPMs provide continuous compliance monitoring, configuration drifts prevention and security operations center investigations. CSPMs not only monitor the present state of the infrastructure but also generate a policy that describes the ideal state of the infrastructure and guarantees that all network activity adheres to this policy.

CSPM augments the CASB's enforcement powers by continually monitoring, assessing, and resolving configuration problems between users and IaaS platforms. Using both services allows managers to maintain security rules at all levels of their cloud architecture and avoid configuration drift.

What are the Differences Between CSPM and CISPA?

Cloud Infrastructure Security Posture Assessment (CISPA) refers to the first generation of CSPMs. CISPAs were primarily concerned with reporting, but CSPMs feature automation ranging from simple job execution to advanced application of artificial intelligence.

What are the Differences Between CSPM and CWPP?

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPPs) integrate the security of cloud workloads across many providers, protecting all sorts of workloads in any location. The features provided by CWPPs include anti-malware, vulnerability management, and application security tailored to meet the needs of the current infrastructure.

On the other hand, CSPM solutions are intended for evaluating the whole cloud ecosystem, not just individual workloads. In addition, CSPM systems provide automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and remedial assistance. This guarantees that companies are not only notified of the problem but also provided with remediation instructions.

What are the Best CSPM Providers?

The worldwide market for cloud security posture management is projected to increase at a CAGR of 15.3% from USD 4.2 billion in 2022 to USD 8.6 billion in 2027. Low visibility across the IT infrastructure and an increase in configuration errors in cloud infrastructure, the lack of efficient security tools and processes to manage cloud-based environments, and the development of cloud security capabilities such as simple DevSecOps integration and threat intelligence are some of the factors driving the market growth.

The market leaders and top players in the CSPM industry are listed below:

• Check Point

• Cisco

• Fortinet

• Fujitsu

• IBM

• Microsoft

• Netskope

• Palo Alto Networks

• Trend Micro

• VMWare

• Zscaler

Figure 1. Best CSPM Providers

They provide several CSPM-related options. With a vast and robust B2B network, these businesses represent a significant portion of the CSPM industry. These vendors have established their position in the market by giving user-specific solutions and continually implementing growth strategies to attain the required growth.

A few of the developing CSPM start-ups that are fostering the expansion of the business with their technological knowledge are as follows:

• Adaptive Shield

• AppOmni

• Ascend Technologies

• C3M

• Caveonix

• Ermetic

• Obsidian Security

• OpsCompass

• Orca Security

• Wiz.io

These firms are technological disruptors because their product offerings are much more inventive than their rivals'. They concentrate on establishing portfolios of products and services and introducing innovations to the market.