Cloud Security Posture Management

An Overview Of Cloud Security Posture Management

It refers to the proactive and continuous monitoring of security in cloud environments. This approach is necessary to ensure that cloud infrastructure is secure, compliant, and aligned with organizational policies and industry standards.

‍CSPM solutions work by scanning cloud accounts and workloads to identify risks and vulnerabilities, such as unsecured data exposure, misconfigured security controls, or non-compliant configurations. CSPM tools can then provide organizations with automated remediation solutions, prioritize vulnerabilities, and provide detailed reports to help IT and security teams identify gaps and optimize their security posture in the cloud.

‍By implementing CSPM, organizations can ensure that their cloud environments are secure and compliant with industry regulations, while reducing their exposure to cyber threats and protecting sensitive data in the cloud.

What Makes Managing the Cloud Security Posture Crucial?

As the basic CSPM meaning illustrates, it's the automated risk identification and remedial approach widely used for PaaS and IaaS enterprise solutions. It delivers swift and erroneous risk assessment, incident response, cyberrisk visualization, DevOps migration, and compliance overseeing.

CSPM is viable enough to deliver in a container, hybrid, and multi-cloud infrastructure. For an enterprise, the use of CSPM tools brings a lot to the table. For instance, it’s crucial to: 

• Supply adequate security automation 

Handling the security profile of a cloud or IT ecosystem manually is a tedious and erroneous task. With CSPM tools, organizations have a chance to eliminate human efforts from myriad security workflows and lead to instant threat pinpointing. 

With the right kind of CSPM tool, businesses can parse the ample cloud configuration components mechanically. As CSPM can perform scanning regularly, risk diagnosis becomes expedient and hardly misses out on any threat. 

When used diligently, CSPM is of great use to remediate any risk immediately. This way, it improves the primary insights of an organization over the security profile of containers and the used cloud ecosystem. 

• Gain centralized visibility 

Scattered security details demand more effort in data sorting before making any decision or reaching any conclusion. AppSec professionals have to decide which threat aims at which cloud component. This extensive data sorting delays the response and lets some threats buy time and expand their penetration. 

CSPM is the easiest way to have a centralized knowledge base of security concerns and risks, as it can collect insights from any kind of cloud type and stored workloads. Whichever resources you’re using, CSPM can be paired with them and provide a crisp overview of the vulnerabilities. 

•  Risk prioritization 

Besides figuring out the presence of risk & identifying it, CSPM security tools categorize the vulnerabilities as they are spotted. With its help, security experts can learn about the risk factor of a vulnerability. This way, businesses will know which vulnerability has more danger attached to it and proffers immediate remedies for that. 

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How Does CSPM Work?

CSPM cloud security tool follows a simple approach that aims to do no early risk sensing At the very basic level, the reason behind any poor configuration is the lack of an appropriate configuration policy. In the absence of any standard configuration policy, businesses fail to standardize the configurations. 

CSPM keeps an eye on these dangerous poor cloud configurations. When a viable CSPM tool is in place, the cloud is scanned regularly. It has a pre-configured list of acceptable cloud configurations. Poor cloud configurations are reported immediately. 

As soon as any wrong configuration is detected, the DevOps team is notified,, and an effective remedy is offered. To supply better insights, CSPM uses techniques like threat discovery, visibility-checking, monitoring, hardening guidance, and remedial solutions. 

CSPM - The Cruciality and Scope

CSPM security plays a great role in improving the cloud SEC ecosystem. This is possible because of assorted capabilities such as:

• Automation that helps in early and error-free threat identification without any human interaction 
• Real-time management for assorted cloud ecosystems 
• Accurate identifications of cloud-related misconfigurations
• Maintenance of cloud policies and compliance 
• Immediate update scanning and alters 
• Risks assessment as instructed by any of the respective cloud security frameworks 
• Periodic system scanning to spot any problematic configurations. 

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Benefits of CSPM

It’s easy to crush cybersecurity challenges if CSPM is by your side. With its effectual implementation, businesses can: 

• Gain more control 

As CSPM brings every cloud and its monitoring/analytics to one central platform, it’s easy to gain complete control of a Cloud’s security operations. Enterprises don’t have to invest efforts in switching tabs to figure out what’s happening where. With CSPM, you can also gain control over on-premise IaaS and PaaS tools. 

• Sorted posture management 

As CSPM does commendable cloud SEC automation for all, businesses can have a simple and easy-to-understand posture management process. The offered automation and AI assistance can help in rapid threat discovery, remediation, and integration. 

• Stay informed about every threat 

CSPM is always in place and remains active. Even if you’re not overseeing it, it’s monitoring your cloud’s health. This way, it can keep an eye on every possible risk that might get overlooked by humans. It sends real-time updates. 

• Get helpful insights on cybersecurity 

In addition to accurate threat diagnosis, CSPM is useful in furnishing appropriate recommendations for the AppSec team. It can guide you in using the appropriate remediation approach that will deliver instant results.

• Maintain the compliances

For every cloud service provider, adherence to compliances like HIPAA, GDPR, and many more is a non-negotiable operational aspect. With CSPM, achieving all these compliances is easy as it can help in generating auto CyberSec reports generation, can help you perform continual posture supervising, and can audit the threat data for SOC teams. 

CSPM And Other Cloud Security Solutions

CSPM often gets paired with miscellaneous techniques to furnish an approvingly integrated security approach. CSPM shares similarities with a few solutions and shares distinct dissimilarities with others. Here is a quick comparison of CSPM with some of the most used cloud SEC solutions. 

1. CIEM vs. CSPM

CISM means Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management. Being an inventive cybersecurity tool, it does real-time tracking of probable threat-causing user accounts. It keeps human-driven and mechanical risk factors into consideration. CSPM, as we all know, helps maintain data privacy and compliance by automating cyber risk discovery. 

2. CSPM and CNAPP

CNPP, or Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (What is Cloud-Native?), is an integrated way to gain a holistic perspective of the conceivable cloud vulnerabilities. It often features CSPM, CSNS, and CWPP to help you obtain a detailed overview of CyberSec. 

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CNAPP’s scope is the entire cloud ecosystem, which implies it has a far-flung reach. CSPM is a part of CNAPP and assists it with accurate risk diagnosis. 

3. CSPM v/s Cloud Infra Security Posture Assessment (CISPA) 

CISPA aims to do early noting of problematic cloud configurations that can further give birth to huge threats. This helps in trimming down the risks. Even though CSPM is also useful for controlling cloud vulnerabilities, its concerned area is finding loopholes in the cloud configuration. 

4. CSPM v/s Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPPs) 

CWPP helps organizations to safeguard workloads and control risk probabilities. It can’t look beyond CWPP. But, the reach of CSPM is extensive, and it keeps all sorts of cloud ecosystems into consideration. The automation offered by CSPM is complex, while CWPP uses straightforward automation. 

5. CSPM v/s Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs) 

CASB or Cloud Access Security Brokers aims to do quick risk detection of malware, data theft, and authentications using a firewall. CSPM deals in network security. On the other hand, CASBs handle the cloud infrastructure. 

CSPM Best Practices 

For organizations seeking a highly active and result-driven cybersecurity approach, CSPM is an imperative tool to adopt. However, it’s crucial to place the best CSPM practices so that desired results are experienced. Here is a quick rundown of the best CSPM practices to use. 

• Limit the User Access Rights.

The secret behind a successful compromised cloud configuration attempt is over-exploited Cloud Control Plane access. When organizations lack command over its Cloud Control Panel, vulnerability risks are doubled-up. Hence, place appropriate access control measures and make sure the Control Panel usage is fully monitored. 

• Use Principle of Least Privileges. 

Attackers don’t have a tough time exploiting accounts that are not properly managed or have exploited access privileges. As the cloud has extensive use cases, controlling its user privileges is important. The principle of Least Privilege is of great help here as it assists in easy Identity Management. 

• Impose data sharing limitation.

The organization has appropriate measures in place to make sure that no data is shared with unidentified resources and cloud storage is not exploited. Data-sharing practices like using encryption for sensitive data, using key rotation, and scrutinizing the storage access 

are of great use when it comes to controlling data sharing within the cloud. 

• Keep the cloud network boundaries protected.

We know it’s not easy to measure the cloud’s perimeter because it’s vast. Still, we will recommend placing appropriate cloud network circumference safeguarding practices to control intruders. Some of the preferred techniques here are using WAF, deploying Security Groups, and using VPCs. 

In addition, traffic logging and monitoring are also recommended to prevent any forced entry to the cloud. 

• Carry out regular risk assessments for the cloud ecosystem. 

Executing periodic cloud risk assessments works best when we talk about identifying hidden and evident risks. 

• Conduct awareness programs and training for the team. 

No practice tends to deliver expected results if the team is not taking recommended actions. Any negligence from the team end can put all the efforts to be in vain. Hence, organizations have to carry out regular cybersecurity awareness training and programs for the team so that members are aware of its importance. 

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Wallarm And Cloud Security Posture Management

As a leading API security platform, Wallarm offers a wide range of solutions assisting greatly to enterprises to maintain the pink health of under-consideration cloud ecosystems. Its products, like Cloud-Native WAAP and API Threat Prevention, are feature-rich tools proffering end-to-end APIs & microservices protection. They are compatible with leading cloud types. Integrate Wallarm offering with CSPM, and you could see your ordinary cybersecurity approach delivering more.