IT Security

What is CIEM and How Does it Work?

Posted on by Complytec
04
Jun

According to Gartner, over 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms, and 85% of organizations will embrace a cloud-first principle by 2025. These statistics depict how organizations lean towards cloud infrastructures and solutions to manage their business assets. While there are many benefits to deploying cloud-based solutions, a common challenge would be controlling who has access across multi-cloud platforms. 

This blog will explore how CIEM can effectively help you manage your cloud assets. We will begin by explaining Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management(CIEM), how it works, its components and benefits, and how to choose the right CIEM solution for your organization. 

What is Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management? 

Cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) is a cloud security solution for managing your organization’s cloud resources. CIEM solutions monitor cloud identities and provide visibility into cloud entitlements to detect and mitigate risks posed by unauthorized access. 

But what are cloud entitlements? They refer to permissions granted to a human, machine, or service to access a cloud identity. With cloud entitlements, your organization is aware of the users who have access to your most sensitive cloud identities and resources. Organizations must constantly monitor these privileges or permissions because outdated or redundant privileges may pose a high-security risk. 

Let’s understand CIEM’s capabilities and why organizations must incorporate them into their cloud-based security solutions. 

How Does CIEM Work?

Using CIEM as part of your organization’s security posture is beneficial in many ways, as CIEM tools and services offer specific capabilities and features. 

CIEM tools discover, monitor, and manage cloud entitlements. They continuously scan cloud environments and generate information about who or what applications can access critical cloud identities. These tools help organizations determine which cloud identity may pose a risk and if a user should have access to them. 

With its advanced ML and AI algorithms, CIEM solutions monitor cloud identities and user activity patterns to detect suspicious activity across your organization’s cloud environments. When CIEM tools detect suspicious behavior or unknown users attempting to access critical assets, they alert your organization’s security teams, equipping them to mitigate cloud security risks.  

Additionally, CIEM solutions offer recommendations on how organizations can remediate cloud identity threats and risks. They ensure users have limited but appropriate permissions to perform their tasks without any hindrances. These tools also automatically apply the principle of least privilege (PoLP) and update or revoke privileges based on your organization’s cloud security strategies. 

Let us explore how cloud infrastructure entitlement management helps organizations overcome cloud security challenges.  

How Does CIEM Help Organizations Overcome Security Challenges? 

CIEM tools help organizations overcome various cloud security challenges; here are a few mentioned below: 

Overcoming Lack of Visibility 

Most organizations lack complete visibility into who has access to their cloud resources. CIEM tools help organizations understand who can access their most sensitive resources and identities across their cloud infrastructure. With a unified view of entitlements, organizations can monitor and manage access controls to avoid any risk posed by unauthorized access. 

Managing Over-Privileged Access 

CIEM security solutions help organizations manage their access controls by identifying users with more access to and control over resources than necessary. In such a scenario, CIEM  solutions will enable organizations to opt for the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP). This cloud infrastructure security concept ensures privileges and access are limited only to what users need to perform their tasks. Minimizing access controls helps organizations prevent unauthorized access and reduces their attack surface. 

Centralizing Multiple Identities 

With the advent of cloud services and infrastructure, most organizations that have deployed multi-cloud platforms or cloud infrastructure need help tracking and managing their resources and identities. CIEM vendors simplify identity management by centralizing all identities with a unified platform that enables organizations to apply and manage access controls efficiently. 

Simplifying Complex Multi-Cloud Environments 

Managing multiple cloud environments or various multi-cloud platforms can be overwhelming for organizations. Due to the complexity of these platforms, they may need to be made aware of malicious users gaining access to their resources. CIEM cloud security solutions can help organizations unify access management across various platforms by eliminating platform complexities and applying consistent access controls. 

Adhering to Compliance Requirements

Most organizations must adhere to specific regulatory and compliance requirements, which require them to apply particular access controls and protect sensitive information. CIEM cloud security tools help organizations by providing auditing and reporting capabilities, enabling them to identify areas of non-conformity and adhere to compliance and regulatory requirements. 

Let’s understand the components of CIEM and how it works. 

Components of CIEM and How Do They Work? 

Most cloud-based security solutions incorporate CIEM components into their cloud security management policies to ensure their cloud assets are secure. Here are the core components of CIEM:

Identity and Access Management (IAM)
CIEM solutions offer organizations complete visibility into who has access to their cloud assets and what actions they can undertake to avoid data violations or breaches. With a unified view of cloud identities and access controls, organizations can quickly identify if their sensitive assets are at risk and take immediate action. 

Principle of Least Privilege  (PoLP)

CIEM tools help organizations apply the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP), which means granting users and applications the minimum access to resources that allow them to complete their tasks. With PoLP,  organizations can avoid unauthorized access and minimize their attack surface. 


Entitlement Visibility 

CIEM cloud security solutions offer visibility into an organization’s user activity patterns and access controls across the cloud environments. Organizations can detect anomalies in user patterns and manage access controls effectively. Moreover, organizations can create audit trails based on this information and utilize them to strengthen cloud security management measures. 

Automated Remediation 

With entitlement visibility, CIEM tools can help organizations continuously monitor cloud identities and entitlements. This enables them to detect any unusual or suspicious permissions automatically and immediately offer remediation steps such as rightsizing or revoking them. CIEM remediation efforts can help organizations streamline their overall cloud security controls. 

Centralized Governance 

CIEM tools provide organizations with a centralized view of their cloud entitlements. This allows organizations to easily surpass the complexity of multiple cloud platforms and identify any security gaps or inconsistencies with access controls, helping them govern their cloud infrastructures efficiently. 

Let us explore why your organization needs to incorporate CIEM into its cloud security management efforts. 

Why Does Your Organization Need CIEM? 

A common dilemma for most organizations is whether they must incorporate CIEM into their cloud security strategies. Here are the benefits of CIEM and why your organization needs it: 

Enhanced Access Management

CIEM solutions will help your organization enhance access management by gathering and providing data on access controls and permissions across various cloud infrastructures. With this information, your organization can protect its cloud resources by identifying suspicious users and initiating remediation efforts to either limit or revoke their access based on criteria such as roles,  departments, etc. Additionally, CIEM enhances your organization’s security by minimizing the potential for human error in managing access rights.

Refined Policy Enforcement 

CIEM solutions enable your organization to strengthen policy enforcement by ensuring consistent access controls are applied across your organization. With information on who has access to sensitive cloud resources, your organization can define and enforce stringent access policies based on user attributes, device characteristics, and location. Your organization can also combine the deployment of these policies with cloud-based security solutions to ensure your cloud identities are secure. 

Improved Compliance 

CIEM helps your organization stay compliant by providing insights into user access and activity. With its auditing and reporting capabilities, CIEM tools demonstrate compliance with regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI DSS. Your organization can proactively manage permissions, mitigate the risk of non-compliance penalties, and become compliant-ready.

Detection of Anomalies  

CIEM tools help organizations continuously monitor cloud identities and entitlements. They also analyze user activity patterns to identify suspicious activity, such as an unknown user accessing sensitive data or changes in access control. By detecting anomalies beforehand, your organization can immediately begin remediation efforts to mitigate severe risks. 

Simplified Audits and Reports 

With CIEM, your organization’s security teams have complete control and visibility over cloud entitlements and access controls. This will help them prepare detailed audit trails and generate reports while clearly defining who has access to sensitive cloud assets and if there are any security weaknesses or breaches. Your security team can also seek the help of cloud security services that incorporate CIEM components to prepare detailed reports that can improve your organization’s overall security posture. 

We have provided detailed insight into cloud infrastructure entitlement management, its capabilities, how it helps organizations overcome security challenges, and why your organization needs it. While CIEM can enable your organization to improve its overall security posture, it is not enough to deploy CIEM alone. Your organization must invest in a comprehensive cloud security company that provides various capabilities to tackle your organization’s cloud security challenges. 

Strengthen Your Cloud Security Measures with ComplyTec! 

ComplyTec is your organization’s trusted partner for cloud security management! We partner with your security team to develop cybersecurity solutions that strengthen protection against threats and vulnerabilities based on your organizational needs.

ComplyTec has provided IT solutions to various North American organizations, including Blue-chip companies and government agencies. We bring vulnerability management and security expertise to your organization while enhancing its operational efficiency. 

Your Cloud Security Partner for Success – ComplyTec!

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FAQs

  1. What is CIEM? 

Cloud Identity and Entitlement Management (CIEM) is a cloud security solution that helps organizations discover, monitor, and manage user identities and their privileges across various cloud infrastructures. CIEM solutions help organizations detect the risks posed by redundant or outdated privileges and mitigate them by updating or revoking permissions. 

  1. How is CIEM used? 

CIEM centralizes and streamlines the management of user identities, roles, and access permissions across cloud-based applications and services. It provides your organization’s security team with tools to define and enforce access policies, monitor user activity in real time, and generate reports to ensure adherence to compliance requirements. 

  1. Are CNAPP and CIEM the same? 

No, CNAPP (Cloud Native Application Protection Platform) and CIEM are not the same. While both are cloud-based security solutions offered by cloud security companies to secure cloud assets, they serve different purposes.

CNAPP focuses on securing cloud-native applications and infrastructure and offers a holistic view of cloud security risks across your organization’s cloud infrastructure. It utilizes various cloud security capabilities, such as CIEM, CSPM, and CWPP.

CIEM, on the other hand,  focuses only on managing user identities and access permissions within cloud environments. In simple terms, CNAPP helps organizations centralize and unify risks associated with cloud identities across cloud environments, while CIEM manages who can access these identities and how they can interact with them.

  1. Does my organization need CSPM or CIEM? 

Your organization can choose either cloud security service based on your specific cybersecurity needs. CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management) focuses on identifying and mitigating risks arising from cloud infrastructure misconfigurations, while CIEM focuses on managing user identities and permissions across cloud environments. 

If your organization is primarily concerned with securing cloud infrastructure and configurations, CSPM may be the right choice. However, CIEM would be more suitable if you need to manage user access and permissions across cloud services. The ideal approach for your organization may be to deploy a cloud security company offering both CSPM and CIEM capabilities to strengthen your organization’s cloud security posture.

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