What is CIEM?
Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management reduces risk of identity-based attacks on your cloud infrastructure by centralizing authorization through intelligent, policy-based controls. The purpose of CIEM is to understand which access entitlements exist across cloud and multi-cloud environments, and then identify and mitigate risks resulting from entitlements that grant a higher level of access than they should.
An essential part of your cloud security strategy, CIEM tools help you set cloud permissions correctly from the start and provide ongoing monitoring and risk-based evaluations so you can adjust those permissions to align with changing context.
The benefits of CIEM
As the number of human and machine identities proliferate and constantly change, it’s nearly impossible for enterprises to understand who has access to which resources, particularly in a multi-cloud environment.
CIEM connects the dots across the fragmented identity layer of your attack surface. CIEM solutions provide cloud security leaders and PAM/IAM administrators with deep context into identity usage. They automatically discover excess or stale privileges and limit authorization in accordance with the Principle of Least Privilege. As a result, they shorten the path to rightsizing permissions, and help you meet compliance requirements and reduce risk.
What are the components of CIEM?
Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management helps security teams control who has access to what in cloud environments. The goal? To ensure permissions are right-sized and continuously monitored to reduce risk. Here’s what makes up a strong CIEM strategy:
Identity governance
Policies define which users, applications, or machines should have access to cloud resources, ensuring a consistent, enforceable security approach across the organization.
Security policies
Access rules dictate the who, what, when, and where of cloud permissions, ensuring that access is granted only when it’s necessary.
Centralized management
A single dashboard allows IT and security teams to monitor and adjust entitlements across multiple cloud environments, streamlining oversight and reducing misconfigurations.
Entitlement visibility
Security teams need real-time insights into who has access to what. Visibility helps detect unnecessary or excessive permissions before they become security gaps.
Rightsizing permissions
CIEM continuously assesses permissions to apply least privilege—ensuring users and workloads have only the access they need, no more, no less.
Advanced analytics
Behavior analytics and machine learning identify unusual access patterns and flag potential risks before they escalate.
Compliance management
CIEM ensures cloud entitlements align with security frameworks and regulations, helping organizations pass audits and avoid compliance violations.
How CIEM works
CIEM correlates a wide range of identities across different systems to best understand an organization’s permissions structure. Typically, CIEM solutions connect to all major cloud platform vendors such as Google Cloud Public (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure so that all identities operating within and across these clouds are seen and monitored.
In addition, CIEM connects to major identity providers (IdPs) such as Active Directory, Entra ID, and Ping so that roles, groups, policies, usage, and other information can be synthesized to provide the full context of each identity.
Visualizations in CIEM solutions show you the “effective access” for each identity through the discovery of potential access pathways they may use to navigate across your IT environment.
CIEM solutions leverage and Machine Learning (ML) for predictive analytics and intelligent recommendations regarding the level of permissions an identity receives. The analytics engine looks at how identities leverage cloud resources and determines how their usage corresponds to typical behavior and other identities.
In addition, CIEM employs continuous monitoring and periodically adjusts or re-factors permissions of individual identities to comply with policies. CIEM can fix policy drift by reducing privileges, and trigger actions to remediate misconfigurations. For example, if CIEM identifies stale or non-used accounts, it can remove them automatically to prevent them from being leveraged by an attacker.
Ideally, CIEM solutions are an embedded part of your identity creation and lifecycle governance process.
The role of CIEM in cloud security
CIEM plays a critical role in cloud security by keeping access permissions in check. Here’s how it strengthens your security posture:
Improves visibility
CIEM offers a detailed, real-time view of cloud entitlements, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.
Enforces least privilege
By eliminating unnecessary access, CIEM minimizes the risk of stolen credentials leading to major breaches.
Automates compliance
CIEM continuously monitors and enforces security policies, making compliance proactive, not reactive.
Detects anomalies
With AI-driven analytics, CIEM identifies unusual access patterns before they become security incidents.
Simplifies multi-cloud management
One interface to manage entitlements across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and beyond—reducing complexity and human error.
Frequently asked questions
Definition: What is Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management?
CIEM is a security approach that monitors and controls cloud permissions, ensuring that users and applications have only the access they need—nothing more. By continuously analyzing entitlements, CIEM helps organizations reduce the risk of unauthorized access, enforce least privilege policies, and improve overall security posture.
What is the difference between CIEM and CSPM?
CIEM and Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) serve different but complementary purposes. CSPM focuses on identifying misconfigurations and compliance risks across cloud environments, such as open storage buckets or exposed databases. CIEM, on the other hand, specializes in managing identity entitlements, ensuring that permissions are right-sized and not overly permissive.
While CSPM helps secure cloud infrastructure configurations, CIEM ensures access is tightly controlled to prevent credential-based attacks and privilege misuse.
How is Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management used?
Organizations use CIEM to gain full visibility into cloud entitlements, remove excessive or unused permissions, and enforce least privilege access. By continuously analyzing identity and access patterns, CIEM helps security teams detect risky entitlements, automate remediation, and maintain compliance with industry regulations. This reduces the attack surface and prevents unauthorized access to sensitive cloud resources.
What’s the relationship between CIEM and CNAPP?
CIEM is a key component of a Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP). While CIEM focuses on managing cloud identities and entitlements, CNAPP provides a broader security framework that includes CSPM, runtime protection, and vulnerability management. Together, CIEM and CNAPP work to secure cloud environments by protecting applications, managing permissions, and ensuring compliance.
More CIEM Resources:
Whitepapers
Products