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What is CIEM? (Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management)

1. What is cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM)?


CIEM automates the process of managing user entitlements in cloud environments, including access, permissions and privileges. Because of its complexities, connections and information storage, your public cloud environment is a prime cyberattack target. As you move more workloads to the cloud, attackers are just as busy seeking ways to compromise your organization and access your sensitive data.

If you're using traditional IT security controls and frameworks in the cloud, you're setting yourself up for a potential cyber disaster. And, as your cloud risk increases, so does your business risk.

Put those legacy security practices behind you. Instead, adopt cloud security tools, like cloud infrastructure entitlements management (CIEM), to automatically keep those risks at bay.

2. What is a CIEM solution?


A comprehensive CIEM solution provides full visibility into cloud resources and your human and non-human identities (NHIs).

As your cloud environment scales and is more connected, the potential for problems such as excessive entitlements increases. CIEM solutions can help you avoid these risks with real-time visibility into your entitlements and automating entitlement fixes.

A CIEM is more than traditional cloud identity access management (IaM). It manages entitlements across cloud platforms like:

CIEM overview

Managing cloud identities and permissions is crucial for cloud security. However, in the public cloud, it is difficult to monitor thousands of new identities and permissions, including service management.

That's even more challenging in a multi-cloud environment. Cloud services providers (CSPs) have varying configurations, tools and access management requirements.

The global shortage of cloud security professionals intensifies these challenges, making it difficult to ensure consistent cloud security control implementation and policy enforcement. This is even harder if your teams share cloud security roles. DevOps, DevSecOps and security teams all have different responsibilities. This creates confusion about who is in charge of cloud security.

Entitlements management solutions can help you manage and mitigate access risk in your cloud infrastructure. These solutions offer insight into cloud environments and help safeguard against identity-related threats such as:

  • Developer privileges
  • Supply chain attacks
  • Identity threat detection and response

Ideally, your CIEM should automatically fix risky and excessive permissions based on your policies and principle of least privilege.

What do CIEM solutions do?

With a CIEM solution, you can:

  • Constantly discover and assess all human and non-human identities such as IaM permissions, resources, configurations and entitlements across cloud environments.
  • Find your riskiest permissions and configuration issues across network, compute, data and identity resources.
  • Auto-remediate issues using tickets, wizards and shift-left IaC snippets.
  • Ensure compliance with least privilege access and built-in custom templates to automate compliance, auditing and reports.
  • Enable fast approval so developers can have temporary just-in-time (JIT) access as needed. This access automatically ends right after use to decrease ongoing privilege risk.
  • Identify anomalous behaviors and identity-based threats with checks against your baselines.

What types of entitlements and permissions does a CIEM tool monitor?

A CIEM tool:

  • Monitors IaM roles and policies.
  • Defines cloud resource access permissions for users and groups.
  • Ensures permissions align with least privilege principles.
  • Defines and monitors entitlements permissions for apps and services that access cloud resources to expose excessive permissions.

CIEM tools can also monitor other permissions like network and data access.

3. CIEM’s role in cloud security


In the cloud, it’s increasingly difficult to manually manage entitlements.

Some common challenges:

  • Lack of visibility into identities, resources and permissions
  • Inadequate IaM hygiene
  • Excessive permissions
  • Standing privileges
  • Toxic combinations
  • Inconsistent governance for access
  • Insufficient expertise

Why is CIEM important for cloud security?

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.

4. CIEM and cloud permissions management (CPM)


What is cloud permissions management (CPM)?

Cloud permissions management (CPM) is a CIEM component to manage cloud resource permissions, privileges and entitlements. CPM solutions provide visibility into your cloud permissions to analyze them, identify potential risks and enforce least privilege. This ensures users, applications and services only have necessary permissions to perform tasks.

5. CIEM and identity management


Identity and access management (IAM) and privileged access management (PAM) work hand-in-hand with CIEM.

CIEM supports IAM with granular oversight of cloud-specific entitlements. Together, they ensure cloud permissions align with use and least privilege.

A CIEM tool can also integrate with your PAM processes. Together, you can more effectively monitor and secure elevated access rights, This decreases privilege misuse in the cloud.

What is the difference between CIEM and other identity management solutions?

The main difference between CIEM and other identity management solutions is focus. CIEM manages cloud entitlements. Other identity management solutions are broader.

For example, IAM focuses on user identities and access permissions for on-prem, cloud-based and hybrid cloud management. PAM manages privileged access for users who perform critical tasks. For example, modifying system configurations or accessing sensitive information in your data centers.

What does an entitlement management system do?

An entitlement management system (EMS) manages entitlements, for example, user, apps and services permissions. Entitlement management systems solutions can:

  • Find all entitlements in your environment, including those both explicitly and implicitly granted.
  • Identify potential risks like excessive permissions and orphaned entitlements.
  • Address excessive permissions and other entitlement risks.
  • Provide visibility into entitlements (who has which permissions and resource access).

CIEM vs. IaM

CIEM and IaM are both identity management solutions that manage access to cloud resources. However, there are key differences.

IaM is for digital identity management and security to control user access to systems and resources.

Sometimes, IaM cannot mitigate risks because of configuration problems or excessive permissions. Here, a CIEM provides additional cloud security.

A CIEM complements IaM with:

  • Granular visibility into permissions and access rights with context.
  • Anomaly detection alerts for excessive permissions and misconfigurations.
  • Auto-remediation and automated permissions adjustments.
  • Identity and permission consistent implementation across multi-cloud environments.

Other key differences:

  • CIEM manages entitlements.
    • IaM manages user identities and access permissions.
  • CIEM focuses on cloud resources.
    • IaM may focus on on-prem and cloud resources.
  • CIEM solutions have deeper visibility into cloud entitlements.
    • IaM solutions generally have less.

CIEM vs. PAM

Entitlement management and privileged cloud access management (PAM) are identity management solutions, but they are not the same.

CIEM manages entitlements for all users, apps and services. PAM manages privileged access.

PAM solutions manage access to privileged accounts with digital password vaults. They monitor auditing and compliance activities. These platforms have similar capabilities for the cloud, including privileged access to sensitive data and resources.

6. What role does a CIEM play in cloud security?


CIEM is a cloud management platform that controls resource access to decrease cloud exposure and protect sensitive data.

Why is CIEM important for cloud security and compliance strategies?

Most breaches involve identities. Attackers know organizations often mismanage IaM privileges. They're looking for ways to exploit those flaws and access your systems and data.

A CIEM is important to security because it:

  • Identifies and fixes excessive permissions to significantly minimize your attack surface.
  • Ensures least privilege access to make it harder for unauthorized actors to access sensitive data.
  • Facilitates compliance with PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2 and other regulations. This reduces the chance of non-compliance and regulatory penalties.
  • Exposes and closes various cloud vulnerabilities, such as excessive permissions, orphaned entitlements and improperly set-up entitlements.
  • Streamlines and simplifies cloud management across CSPs so you don’t have to use multiple tools.

Why do CISOs need CIEM?

Chief information security officers (CISOs) should care about CIEM because:

  • Chief information security officers (CISOs) are responsible for protecting data and ensuring cloud security.
    • A CIEM gives CISOs tools and capabilities to effectively manage entitlements, identify and remediate security risks and protect sensitive data.
  • CISOs need insight into entitlements for compliance.
    • It enables teams to address compliance gaps or vulnerabilities and report on performance.
  • CISOs must optimize resources and ensure cloud security investments align with business objectives.
    • CIEM helps quantify return on investment (ROI) for cost-savings, including:
      • Breach risk reduction
      • Lower compliance costs
      • Cloud security maturity and enhanced business resilience
  • Your CISO can use a CIEM to set your cloud security strategy apart from competitors to win new business.

7. CIEM capabilities and limitations


CIEM can reduce risk and address security challenges, but has limitations:

  • Limited coverage
  • False positives
  • Limited automation capabilities
  • Integration challenges

Complex cloud environments create these limitations. Data quality issues are also a widespread problem.

Yet, even with limitations, it's a valuable tool to mature your cloud security program. When you understand CIEM security challenges, you can make better informed decisions to enhance business resilience.

How does CIEM reduce risk?

An entitlements management solution decreases risk by reducing excessive permissions. The tool also identifies misconfigured entitlements so you can enforce least privilege access. This reduces the risk of data breaches, unauthorized access and other security exposures. It can:

  • Deliver comprehensive visibility so you can prioritize risks.
  • Expose the potential impact of risky identities and entitlements.
  • Analyze permissions across various cloud resources.
  • Remediate risky privileges and configurations.
  • Identify and respond to anomalies and threats.
  • Integrate with SIEM for faster response.
  • Ensure minimal permissions for users and services.
  • Provide continuous auditing and compliance support, like automated reports.
  • Enforce least privilege with JIT access controls.

Which challenges does CIEM address?

CIEM addresses several common challenges for managing cloud entitlements:

  • Cloud environments are dynamic with multiple cloud providers, services and entitlements.
  • Organizations often lack visibility into cloud entitlements so they can’t identify excessive permissions, problematic entitlements or monitor unauthorized access.
  • Manual entitlement management is time-consuming and error-prone.
  • Security and compliance regulations require proper entitlement management.
  • Cloud security threats are constantly evolving.
  • Cloud entitlements are often a target for attackers.

8. CIEM benefits


  • Enhances visibility into identities, resources and permissions.
  • Focuses on priority risk mitigation.
  • Provides threat intelligence with context relevant to your unique profile.
  • Supports cloud risk assessments.
  • Automates fixes for risky permissions.
  • Reduces your cloud attack surface by removing inactive users, excessive permissions and anomalies.
  • Supports compliance with identity and access security standards.

9. CIEM best practices


Not all identity tools are CIEMs. And, they don’t all have what you need to effectively secure identities and entitlements.

As a best practice, your CIEM solution should give you comprehensive visibility into cloud risk. It should also include automated fixes and cloud threat intelligence.

Other CIEM best practices:

  • Automatically expose anomalies and over-privileged users.
  • Grant long-standing permissions only when necessary. Utilize JIT access for others.
  • Identify vulnerabilities such as weak credentials like static passwords, no multi-factor authentication (MFA) and unused credentials.
  • Track suspicious behavior for potential attacker activity.
  • Automate issue resolution
  • Send instant alerts to reduce manual oversight and enforce least privilege.

10. CIEM solutions


Why do I need a CIEM solution?

If your organization works in the cloud, you should use a CIEM. It can help you expose and close your cloud identity and access management security gaps. Other IaM solutions can’t address all of your cloud security threats. They also aren't generally part of a single platform.

Choosing a CIEM solution

Not all entitlements management tools are the same. However, there are some key features to consider when choosing a CIEM solution.

For example, does the CIEM tool integrate with your CNAPP solution?

Other features to look for in a CIEM platform:

  • Holistic visibility across all cloud components (data, infrastructure, logs, identities, network).
  • Contextual threat intelligence and risk analysis to automatically expose risky combinations.
  • Full visibility into permissions across different cloud environments to create a unified cloud security view.
  • Ability to enforce least privilege through JIT access and right-sizing permissions for cloud attack surface management.
  • Anomaly detection and continuous monitoring for misconfigurations, excessive permissions and exposed credentials.
  • The ability to automate compliance processes to log and monitor changes, identify flaws and enforce least privilege.
  • Automated compliance reporting.

The Tenable CIEM solution

Tenable’s comprehensive CIEM solution helps your teams manage cloud entitlements with:

  • Centralized entitlement management across multiple cloud providers and infrastructure components within a single platform.
  • Granular entitlement visibility into user permissions, application entitlements and service entitlements.
  • Automated entitlement adjustments to reduce manual effort and minimize errors.
  • Additional guidance for more complex cloud security issues that need human intervention.
  • Real-time cloud threat detection to expose and close risky entitlements to prevent cyberattacks.
  • Integration with other Tenable security tools for a unified cloud security experience.

Tenable’s cloud management tool is part of a comprehensive CNAPP platform. It can help you secure your cloud from attackers. Threat actors are working around the clock to exploit identities, overly-permissive access and excessive permissions.

With Tenable CIEM, you can answer these critical identity-related cloud security questions:

  • Who has access to which resources in the cloud?
  • Where are my greatest risks?
  • What do I need to do to remediate?
  • How do I ensure cloud compliance?

11. CIEM FAQ

What is a cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) tool?

A CIEM, like Tenable's cloud management tool, gives you comprehensive visibility into cloud entitlements. The tool can help govern proper access controls to mature your overall cloud security management processes.

How does it improve cloud management and resource management?

An entitlement management solution can find and fix excessive cloud permissions. It streamlines resource management to reduce your cloud attack surface and decrease the chance of a cloud breach.

How can a CIEM help me optimize cloud spend and ensure cost-effectiveness when managing compute resources?

The tool can help you identify and limit over-provisioning. It can automatically find unused or mismanaged entitlements to help you implement the most cost-effective cloud controls. With better control of compute resources, you can also reduce unnecessary expenses and improve your cloud security ROI.

How does a CIEM enhance cloud cost management within a cloud management suite?

CIEM tools integrate into cloud management suites to give you more detailed insights into cloud access risks and deficiencies. Tenable's CIEM, which is part of a CNAPP, enhances cloud cost management. It can help you align your cloud permissions with actual resource needs to reduce wasted resources.

How can a CIEM help me find and mitigate security vulnerabilities in cloud environments?

CIEM solutions proactively detect excessive or improper permissions that could lead to vulnerabilities or other security gaps. By managing entitlements effectively, you can mitigate risks related to unauthorized access or privilege escalation.

Can CIEM tools improve overall efficiency in managing cloud resources and entitlements?

Yes. An entitlement management platform can improve cloud resource management and reduce manual interventions. The solution can automate entitlement risk detection with automated and actionable resolutions and cloud risk insight.

Tenable's CIEM solution can help you manage cloud access, reduce security risks, meet compliance requirements and enhance cloud security.