Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is a category of security tools that continuously monitors cloud infrastructure for misconfigurations, compliance violations, and security risks. It automates the detection and remediation of insecure cloud settings.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions provide automated, continuous assessment of cloud environments against security best practices and compliance frameworks. As organizations scale their cloud usage, manual security reviews become impractical, making CSPM a critical component of any cloud security strategy.
CSPM tools work by connecting to cloud provider APIs to inventory all resources and evaluate their configurations. They check for common issues such as publicly exposed storage buckets, overly permissive security groups, unencrypted databases, and IAM misconfigurations. When a violation is detected, CSPM platforms can alert security teams, generate compliance reports, or even automatically remediate the issue.
Modern CSPM solutions support multi-cloud environments, allowing organizations to enforce consistent security policies across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other providers. They map findings to compliance frameworks like CIS Benchmarks, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and HIPAA, making it easier for security teams to prioritize remediation and demonstrate compliance to auditors. CSPM is particularly valuable because cloud misconfigurations remain one of the most exploited attack vectors, responsible for a large percentage of cloud data breaches.