Cloud-based software offers many advantages, including improved cost savings, scalability, flexibility, better collaboration, and more. However, as cloud-based platforms become increasingly complex to meet the specific needs of various organizations, ensuring that your cloud remains safe and secure has become essential.
Securing your cloud environment, which contains sensitive data, is extremely important for safeguarding against potential cyberattacks and data breaches. Misconfigurations are often the leading cause of breaches. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is a security solution that can help organizations monitor and manage their cloud infrastructure to identify and resolve misconfigurations, compliance issues, and potential risks.
Cloud security posture management continuously monitors for misconfigurations by identifying issues and policy violations across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud environments. This helps businesses address vulnerable points before they become entry points. As many organizations continue to shift toward multi-cloud and hybrid architectures, CSPM has become crucial in maintaining secure, compliant operations at scale.
A Centralized View
Many organizations store sensitive data across multiple provider platforms, requiring cloud security that can span a company’s system. CSPM enables organizations to reduce the likelihood of cyber attacks and breaches and achieve their overall security goals. This security solution provides a centralized view of all cloud assets.
As the number of businesses utilizing multi-cloud architecture continues to grow, CSPM tools make establishing and maintaining a consistent security system across multiple cloud platforms easier. These tools offer a more inclusive view of assets. Organizations can benefit from these tools, as a cloud security posture management program can automatically discover new resources and continually assess them against security policies and benchmarks such as CIS, NIST, and SOC 2.
Identifying the Problem
Gartner, a leading global research and advisory firm, coined the term “Cloud Security Posture Management.” It consistently found that most cloud breaches are the result of customer misconfigurations. Gartner predicts that 6 in 10 businesses will see cloud misconfigurations as one of their top cloud security priorities by 2026. These misconfigurations make CSPM one of the most important cloud security tools. It addresses misconfigurations by detecting and alerting teams on issues such as insecure storage buckets, open ports, excessive permissions, and untagged resources.
Beyond identifying potential vulnerabilities, CSPM can also help organizations develop configuration baselines for cloud resources. These baselines can be used as snapshot configurations that can monitor and maintain consistency across your cloud-based platforms.
Prioritizing Risks
Establishing configuration baselines and having an overall view of your system to spot issues can help secure your cloud-based platforms; however, CSPM platforms take security a step further. CSPM can help companies prioritize risks based on severity, exploitability, and business impact.
Providing actionable insights into the potential impacts of misconfigurations and system vulnerabilities, CSPM can help organizations prioritize their most important security risks with context-based insights that consider the severity and implications of detected issues. This advanced security solution goes beyond identifying the severity of potential misconfigurations and offering remediation guidance; CSPM can also help businesses respond quickly and more appropriately before and after issues occur.
Making Compliance Scalable
Organizations using cloud-based platforms that require security but are also under strict regulatory requirements can benefit from CSPM, as these tools help simplify audits and reporting. With compliance monitoring necessary, security teams need to understand what needs to be monitored clearly and then utilize CSPM tools to perform compliance checks regarding their cloud infrastructure continually. Cloud security posture management can help ensure businesses comply with frameworks like HIPAA, PCI, DSS, and ISO 27001.
Organizations integrating multi-cloud architecture require strong security programs that can secure their cloud environments. A cloud security posture management program can help narrow the attack window by continually providing a whole picture of a company’s system, detecting possible threats, and monitoring compliance, making it a crucial component of a business’s security system.
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