Book Image

Mastering Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

By : Qamar Nomani
Book Image

Mastering Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

By: Qamar Nomani

Overview of this book

This book will help you secure your cloud infrastructure confidently with cloud security posture management (CSPM) through expert guidance that’ll enable you to implement CSPM effectively, ensuring an optimal security posture across multi-cloud infrastructures. The book begins by unraveling the fundamentals of cloud security, debunking myths about the shared responsibility model, and introducing key concepts such as defense-in-depth, the Zero Trust model, and compliance. Next, you’ll explore CSPM's core components, tools, selection criteria, deployment strategies, and environment settings, which will be followed by chapters on onboarding cloud accounts, dashboard customization, cloud assets inventory, configuration risks, and cyber threat hunting. As you progress, you’ll get to grips with operational practices, vulnerability and patch management, compliance benchmarks, and security alerts. You’ll also gain insights into cloud workload protection platforms (CWPPs). The concluding chapters focus on Infrastructure as Code (IaC) scanning, DevSecOps, and workflow automation, providing a thorough understanding of securing multi-cloud environments. By the end of this book, you’ll have honed the skills to make informed decisions and contribute effectively at every level, from strategic planning to day-to-day operations.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
1
Part 1:CSPM Fundamentals
6
Part 2: CSPM Deployment Aspects
11
Part 3: Security Posture Enhancement
19
Part 4: Advanced Topics and Future Trends

Identity misconfigurations

Identity and Access Management (IAM) misconfigurations are among the most critical issues to address for a hybrid multi-cloud environment. IAM controls who can access what resources and perform what actions within your cloud environment. Misconfigurations in IAM can lead to unauthorized access, data breaches, and other security incidents. Here are some of the most important IAM misconfigurations to be aware of:

  • Excessive permissions: Assigning overly permissive IAM roles or policies that grant more privileges than necessary to users, groups, or services. This happens when you rely on default roles/policies as you end up assigning a similar set of permissions or roles to a large group, which may sometimes be overly permissive for some users.

    Risk: This can lead to the principle of least privilege being violated, enabling attackers who compromise an account to access and modify resources beyond their intended scope.

  • Unused or stale IAM users and...