iii. Identify the risks
This includes assessing the security posture of your cloud infrastructure, identifying vulnerabilities in your cloud configuration, and understanding the risks associated with the data stored in the cloud. For example, let’s say your organization uses AWS for hosting its web application, which contains several instances of web servers, database servers, and storage accounts in the cloud. Your organization’s web application contains sensitive customer data, such as personally identifiable information (PII) and credit card information. After conducting a security assessment, your organization identifies several risks associated with the AWS cloud infrastructure, including configuration issues that could lead to exploitation, misconfigurations of storage accounts that could result in data exposure or loss, lack of encryption of sensitive data at rest and in transit, weak data masking (also known as data obfuscation or data anonymization), and weak tokenization methods. The list could go on and could include weak access controls, such as shared access keys and weak passwords, that could be exploited by attackers to gain unauthorized access to cloud resources, and a lack of monitoring and logging, which could hinder the ability to detect and respond to security incidents.
Based on these risks, your organization needs a CSPM tool that provides vulnerability management, compliance monitoring, configuration management, and threat detection and response capabilities.
iv. Define the scope of the CSPM tool
Based on the risks and security requirements identified previously, you should define the scope of the CSPM tool you need. This includes identifying the features and capabilities that are necessary to address your organization’s specific security needs. Based on the risks that have been identified, the bank needs a CSPM tool that provides vulnerability management, compliance monitoring, configuration management, and threat detection and response capabilities. However, the CSPM tool should also be scoped to monitor the AWS cloud services and assets that are critical to the bank’s financial operations and comply with regulatory requirements.
Therefore, the scope of the CSPM tool would be defined as monitoring EC2 instances, S3 buckets, and RDS instances within the AWS account that hosts the bank’s financial systems, applications, and data. This scope would ensure that the CSPM tool is focused on monitoring the most critical cloud services and assets and providing the necessary security controls to protect sensitive financial data and comply with regulatory requirements such as PCI-DSS and Service Organization Control (SOC) type 2.
Now that we understand the organization’s needs, let’s understand the key CSPM features that would be beneficial for any organization in totality.