Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) are often confused. Despite their acronym similarities, both security solutions focus on protecting data in the cloud. In a world where the terms cloud and SaaS are used interchangeably, this confusion is understandable.
However, this chaos requires protecting data residing within cloud infrastructures such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, as well as SaaS applications such as Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Jira, Zoom, and Slack. Dangerous for some organizations. more.
Assuming that either a CSPM or SSPM protects company resources that reside off-premises, security tools designed solely to protect either cloud or SaaS stacks can no longer be trusted.
It is absolutely imperative for decision makers to understand the difference between CSPM and SSPM, the value they derive from each solution, and how they complement each other.
What does CSPM protect?
CSPM monitors standard and customized cloud applications deployed by customers in public cloud environments to ensure security and compliance posture. Additionally, they typically offer compliance monitoring, DevOps, and dynamic cloud integration capabilities.
Enterprises use cloud platforms for a variety of purposes. Whether it’s used as an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) that allows companies to manage elements such as networks, servers, and data storage, or as a platform that makes it easy to host, build, and deploy customer-facing applications Regardless, cloud platforms contain critical business components.
For example, a company may use IaaS to host its e-commerce website. Using a cloud provider gives you the flexibility to scale web traffic capacity based on traffic flow. Capacity may increase during peak days or seasons, but less resources are required during off-peak or off-seasons.
Within that site, the business may have another app that allows customers to prove their identity (understand the customer process – KYC). That customer is stored in a container and the app can access the information as needed and authorize the user within the website. This is a common way to separate different elements of a service (e-commerce in this case) into different pieces. Apps, containers, servers, and networks. Such isolation is made possible by using IaaS, offering flexibility, better performance, customization, and potentially better security.But all of this comes at the cost of greater complexity and a larger attack surface.
The CSPM is tasked with overseeing the security posture of cloud services hosted on IaaS. In practice, this means scanning cloud settings and identifying misconfigurations that can introduce an element of risk to the service. In situations where you use complex architectures and use containers in your Kubernetes system, configurations become particularly complex, and securing them without using CSPM can lead to configuration drift that exposes your data to the public.
What does SSPM protect?
SSPMs like Adaptive Shield integrate with enterprise applications like Salesforce, Jira, and Microsoft 365 to give visibility and control to security teams and app managers in the SaaS stack. These Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps are hosted by software providers rather than being hosted on your company’s network or cloud infrastructure.
Security teams have a unique challenge of securing SaaS applications. Each SaaS application uses a different topology for its configuration. While security teams need to protect many apps, they cannot issue one-size-fits-all directives for configuring SaaS apps.
SaaS applications store vast amounts of corporate data and resources. Customer data, financial reports, marketing plans, employee profiles, etc. are all stored in various SaaS apps. This makes sharing and collaboration easier, but it also acts as a beacon to threat actors looking to monetize or sabotage your company’s resources.
SSPM provides visibility into each application’s settings, provides a secure score, and alerts security teams and app owners when there are high-risk misconfigurations.
SSPM expands coverage to apps that make it easy for employees to onboard. SSPM provides security teams with a list of connected applications and the scope of permissions granted to the apps.
Security teams are also concerned about users, especially privileged users, using compromised devices to access SaaS applications. SSPM provides user inventory and device inventory. These inventories show users, the apps they are associated with, their scope of permissions, and the hygiene of the devices they are using to access SaaS applications.
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Implement CSPM and SSPM together
Clearly, CSPM and SSPM are integral parts of a robust cloud security platform. Companies with multiple users using multiple her SaaS applications need his SSPM solution to protect their data. At the same time, businesses using cloud services such as Azure, GCP, and AWS will put their operations at risk without a CSPM solution.
CSPM helps organizations identify misconfigured networks, assess data risk, and continuously monitor cloud events in their cloud environments. SSPM helps organizations identify and fix misconfigurations, manage third-party applications, detect configuration drift, manage users, and comply with universal or industry standards.
Each of the two security tools serves a valuable use case. CSPM identifies vulnerable cloud configuration settings, provides security framework compliance, monitors cloud services, and manages changes made to logs.
SSPM has a similar use case, but in a SaaS environment. Misconfiguration management gives him continuous visibility 24/7, allowing security teams to monitor access across his SaaS. It provides compliance reports from the entire stack rather than individual applications, helping IT teams optimize their SaaS license spend. Manage risk from users and devices to ensure only authorized personnel have access to her SaaS data.
SSPM is also used to monitor CSPM applications. Since CSPM is a SaaS solution, SSPM can ensure that CSPM configurations are set correctly, see connected third-party applications, and provide user governance.
SSPM and CSPM work together to secure off-premises data by providing visibility and remediation actions that close vulnerabilities and reduce risk.
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