What Is Cloud Security Posture Management?

Regulated businesses need to follow industry rules and meet compliance standards. That means they must choose a cloud solution that adheres to such guidelines. Not doing to can lead to hefty fines for violations.

Off-boarding IT resources to a cloud infrastructure can be done in a compliant manner. Doing to requires it to first be configured properly. Beyond that, the cloud platform must integrate with the right identity-management, data-security, auditing and monitoring tools. Doing all of these can be a challenge for IT and security teams unfamiliar with the way cloud hosts work.

At the very core of compliance and data security is identity management. This staple is critical to giving users the access they need to do their jobs without putting data at risk. Beyond managing access, the organisation must audit and monitor data activity. These are a required as part of every modern compliance standard. Most cloud providers have tools that integrate directly with the identity management controls organisations already use.

Audit controls can reveal who requested access. But watching what those users do is also a part of compliance. Monitoring tools can spot risky access requests that are often signs of network and account compromise. They can also notify administrators that access controls are poorly configured.

Most cloud providers say that their offerings are compliant. But it’s the responsibility of the organisation to ensure this is the case before they transfer data. Many of the IT requirements laid out by compliance regulations involve CSPM strategies to protect data and monitor for compromise.

For larger organisations, resource usage can get out of control if it isn’t well tracked and managed. If IT retires a server, the server can be deprovisioned in the cloud, saving the company money on IT resources.

If an organisation only has a few assets, keeping track of where budget money is allocated is easy. But when hundreds of cloud resources are provisioned across different departments, old assets may be forgotten and neglected.

These “zombie” resources can cost upwards of thousands of dollars in wasted infrastructure. Worse, they can create cybersecurity issues from unpatched systems and deprecated software. These resources should be organised in a way that keeps them from becoming the source of a critical corporate compromise.

CSPM works to organise resources better so that no infrastructure goes unpatched, whether it’s router firmware or an operating system update on a critical server. This could be in the form of tools that perform asset tracking management or strategies that help IT staff audit resources. Cloud providers have reporting features that make it easier to track assets so that they are not forgotten and unmaintained.

Finding CSPM tools that can fully support corporate resources can be tricky. A corporation may be small when it first sets up a cloud provider. But it will likely need a solution that can scale as its needs grow.

Here are things to consider when looking for the right solution: