Key Features to Look for in a CSPM Solution

Cloud Security Posture Management is a vast category of tools that help companies strengthen the security of their cloud environment. There are plenty of these tools available on the market these days. This guide reviews the key features to look for in a CSPM solution. It will help you choose the tool that will fit your needs best.

Key features in a Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solution

Cloud Security Posture Management tool must provide full visibility and control over your cloud solutions (SaaS, Iaas, and PaaS). Here are the features that you will need to look for in CSPM.

Key Features to look for in a CSPM solution — CSPM key features

Continuous Monitoring and Compliance

Lack of visibility is one of the key problems of cloud environments. It impedes efficient control and timely intervention. The visibility is impossible to achieve without continuous monitoring. That’s why this is the feature you will need in your CSPM.

Make sure that the tool monitors as many events as possible across all the cloud platforms that you have. These include misconfigurations, system access, data access, attacks, and compliance.

Some professionals forget to look for compliance monitoring when choosing the CSPM. They are later forced either to find a third-party solution to specifically cover this gap or opt for another CSPM tool.

Automated Policy Enforcement and Remediation

One of the key problems with managing multi-cloud environments is the growing talent and skill gap. The cloud solutions are rapidly changing. The number of environments used by one organization is growing. And it’s becoming increasingly difficult for IT security teams to keep up with all these changes.

Teams lack professionals, and professionals lack the necessary skills. And with the growing number of threats, departments don’t have enough time and resources to monitor and respond to every threat.

That’s why policies, their automated enforcement, and threat remediation is critical for your business. Modern CSPM will have all these features in its security arsenal.

The policies will enable your system to respond automatically to regular threats (e.g., dangerous sharing) and prevent users from errors or criminal activities. Remediation will enable the system to initiate an algorithm that will minimize the impact of a cyber incident.

Furthermore, this functionality will provide time for your team to investigate, analyze, and plan for the future.

Centralized Dashboard and Reporting

In multi-cloud environments, one of the key problems is that controls are scattered across multiple platforms. As a result, your IT security team has to configure each platform in accordance with your security policies separately.

First of all, it inevitably causes mistakes and takes up too much time. Second, various cloud platforms have different security functionality, and some might just not have the controls you need.

CSPM fixes these problems by providing a centralized dashboard. Now you can configure all your platforms in one place and make sure that the rules are coherent across many clouds.

Furthermore, reporting can give you a bird’s eye look at security trends across your organization and provide you with otherwise undiscovered insights.

Threat Intelligence and Vulnerability Management

The abundance of data that comes from multiple cloud environments can be overwhelming for human perception and hard to analyze. The threat intelligence features of CSPMs can help your IT security team to tackle this challenge.

Threat intelligence will analyze all the event logs coming from multiple cloud environments and categorize them by their severity and urgency. Then this processed data is presented to your IT security team to respond. It helps with arranging your work tasks, decreasing your workload, and assigning your team time more efficiently.

Vulnerability management provides necessary controls to handle the vulnerabilities timely and accordingly.

Scalability and Performance

Scalability is an important feature of any cloud solution, including CSPM. First, many businesses are constantly growing. Second, many companies try out new cloud environments that emerge on the market on a regular basis. CSPM should be easily scalable in terms of the number of users and new integrations.

Performance is another important thing to keep an eye on. If the growth of users causes CSPM to stop functioning properly, it’s not a good solution for your business.

User-Friendly Interface and Ease of Use

Last but not least, the CSPM should have an intuitively understandable interface. The main task of this tool is to decrease the workload of your IT security team. If they waste too much time looking for necessary data or important control, the CSPM fails to save time and resources.

CSPM Features FAQs

How does continuous monitoring contribute to effective cloud security?

It provides important visibility into all the cloud events and settings and helps detect misconfigurations and cyber incidents.

Can a CSPM solution help with compliance management and regulatory requirements?

Yes. CSPM has the functionality to detect non-compliance in cloud environments.

How do automated policy enforcement and remediation capabilities enhance cloud security?

It enables you to prevent standard security incidents (e.g., unauthorized access) and reduce time on incident response.

What are the benefits of having a centralized dashboard and reporting in a CSPM solution?

It’s easier to control the security of multiple cloud environments from one centralized place rather than try to do it on these platforms. You can enforce one configuration for all your environments.

Can a CSPM solution integrate with different cloud platforms and security tools?

Yes. It’s one of the CSPM’s key functions. You should, however, check the integrations to see if the CSPM matches your needs.

How does a CSPM solution leverage threat intelligence for proactive security measures?

CSPM sifts the event logs and categorises events by their urgency and severity. It helps your team to take timely actions against the most significant cyber incidents.

What role does vulnerability management play in CSPM, and how is it implemented?

CSPM vulnerability management helps IT security team to detect cloud vulnerabilities and provides suggestions on how to patch them.

What considerations should be made regarding user-friendliness and ease of use in a CSPM solution?

We suggest leverage the trial period and see if your security team can work with the CSPM easily.

How can organizations leverage CSPM to enhance their incident response capabilities?

CSPMs detect incidents and have the functionality to automatically respond to some of them. Companies can reduce the response time significantly.

Can a CSPM solution provide real-time alerts and notifications for security incidents?

Yes. You can configure CSPM to send you automated alerts and notifications for security incidents.

What role does automation play in managing security configurations and compliance checks?

Automation helps companies detect and fix improper security configurations and settings that break the rules and regulations. Furthermore, such detection and fixing are agentless.

How does a CSPM solution help organizations identify and remediate misconfigurations in the cloud?

Many CSPMs have in-built functionality for misconfiguration detection. They alert your security team and provide suggestions on changing configurations. Some even have policies that can fix this problem automatically.