What is Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM)?

Cloud Infrastructure Entitlements Management

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CIEM (Cloud Infrastructure Entitlements Management) is a set of processes and practices focused to manage and control access to organizational cloud-based resources. These may include things like managing access rights, permissions, and privileges for a single or multi-cloud user. In simple terms, CIEM is a way to understand and regulate who has access to what in your cloud environment.

A typical CIEM solution provides you with a single centralized dashboard to view all the entitlements in your cloud environment. Enabling you to mitigate unauthorized access, data breach, and related security mishaps. Organizations using cloud infrastructure, consider CIEM as one of the important tools to reduce their cloud-centric security risks.
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Key Components of Cloud Infrastructure Entitlements Management

  • Identity and Access Management (IAM): IAM helps ensure that only authorized users can access the appropriate resources.
  • Access Control Policies: Defining and implementing access control policies to determine who has access to what, what actions they can perform, and under what conditions. This should also ensure that users in the cloud have the right-sized permission. No more and no less.
  • Audit and Compliance Management: Regular audits to monitor cloud assets and detect any potential security breaches or compliance violations.
  • Alerting: Implementing rules to alert security officers about any suspicious activities, over-privileges, changes in permissions (IAM drift), and on-demand reports.

Benefits of using CIEM

Knowing the fact “The moment you think of using the cloud, security comes into the picture” thus, CIEM solutions are crucial for organizations of all sizes to ensure compliance with industry regulations and standards.

Here are a few benefits of using CIEM

  • Improved visibility and reduced risk: Providing a centralized view of all cloud entitlements to identify any potential security risks.
  • Compliance: Comply with regulatory standards such as GDPR, IAM, CCPA, and many others by ensuring a properly configured cloud environment.
  • Right-sized permissions: Help you to right-size permissions to reduce the risk of unauthorized access and improve security.
  • Continuous monitoring: Continuously monitors cloud environment changes to help you to identify and respond to security threats quickly.
  • Seamless integration: CIEM can integrate with other security tools, such as SIEM and CASB, and provide a more comprehensive view of your security posture.
  • Cost-effectiveness: Consider it as one of the cost-effective ways to improve your cloud security posture.

Choose the right CIEM solution

With the security markets spreading wide, organizations need to evaluate security tools with caution. The selected tool should be promising and should not throw any false positives. Consider the following tips before getting hold of any CIEM solution.

  • Consider and list the needs of your organization.
  • Ensure that product features and specifications are matching your expectations.
  • Choose a solution with a strong track record of security and compliance.
  • Go through case studies, read reviews, and find what people say about them.
  • Sign up for demo sessions, meet, and get your doubts cleared.

We know that finding and deploying a perfect security solution is overwhelming. But, be patient and take the longer route. Understand that “Slow and steady, wins the race” and don’t try to compromise security with time.

  • Start Small: Start deployment for a small number of workloads and expand as you gain experience.
  • Include stakeholders: Deploying CIEMs can be disruptive, thus getting a green signal from your stakeholders is a good practice.

You can also read our recent article "Benefits of using the right CIEM solution and how to choose one" here.

CSPM vs. CIEM

In general, both CIEM and CSPM have their own benefits. It depends on what areas organizations are focused on to improve their cloud environment. Whereas CIEM is focused more on access to cloud resources, organizations concerned about their cloud misconfigurations can go for a CSPM solution. It depends on the requirements of the organization and finding what works best for them. Using both of them is a better choice to improve overall security infrastructure.

Know Your Infrastructure Misconfigurations

AWS

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Azure

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GCP

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Secure your cloud infrastructure with Cloudanix CIEM and prevent unauthorized access to your cloud resources.

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