3. CIEM’s role in cloud security
In the cloud, it’s increasingly difficult to manually manage entitlements.
Some common challenges:
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Lack of visibility into identities, resources and permissions
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Inadequate IaM hygiene
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Excessive permissions
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Standing privileges
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Toxic combinations
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Inconsistent governance for access
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Insufficient expertise
CIEM is important for cloud security for several reasons. It can help reduce the risk of data breaches, enhance compliance and your mature cloud security posture.
The solution creates visibility into all your cloud identities, resources and permissions so you can quickly identify potential vulnerabilities. It focuses on critical threats first and automates remediation. It can also provide additional guidance for more complex issues that need human intervention.
Entitlement management also reduces your attack surface. It can terminate inactive users, control excessive permissions, identify behavioral anomalies and revoke standing privileges. A CIEM enables you to enforce least privilege and implement a zero-trust security program.
CIEM vs. CSPM
CIEM and cloud security posture management (CSPM) are complementary, but not the same.
A CSPM manages compliance and identifies entitlement security issues. A CIEM manages cloud asset inventory and identifies entitlement risks that can lead to security breaches.
CSPMs assess cloud infrastructure settings and configurations to determine compliance levels. A CSPM can also map risks to industry standards and best practices, such as:
CIEM solutions complement CSPM tools. They identify permission vulnerabilities and can automatically mitigate them.
Some CSPM solutions work with CIEM to find identity-related risks and excessive permissions. They can also automatically fix flaws and enhance visibility into potential issues to address them quickly.
CSPM automatically monitors cloud configurations. It maps data to regulatory standards and internal policies. The solution can also give you detailed visibility in the cloud and auto-remediate cloud misconfigurations.
Security, IaM, DevOps and compliance teams can benefit from using a CSPM.
As a best practice, look for a unified CSPM-CIEM solution. Look for a single platform with cloud entitlements and cloud security posture management, and compliance monitoring capabilities.
CIEM vs. CNAPP
CIEM can either be a standalone product or a component of a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP). A CNAPP is a cloud security tool built specifically to protect cloud-native applications.
CNAPP solutions typically include features such as workload protection, container security and API security. CNAPP integrates cloud security posture management (CSPM), cloud workload protection (CWP) and other risk protections in a single solution.
CIEM vs. CWPP
A cloud workload protection platform (CWPP) protects cloud workloads with vulnerability scanning, intrusion detection and network security features.
CIEM is complementary to CWPP. It manages entitlements, while CWPP protects workloads from attacks.
Some CWP solutions have infrastructure as code (IaC) or policy as code (PaC) capabilities. This enables shift-left security and earlier security integration in your development pipeline via APIs.