GigaOm Key Criteria for Evaluating Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) Solutionsv2.0

1. Executive Summary

Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) is an emerging cybersecurity technology designed to address the complex challenges of managing identities, access rights, and permissions across cloud multicloud environments. As organizations adopt multicloud strategies, CIEM has become a critical component of modern cloud security frameworks.

CIEM solutions provide a centralized platform for managing and securing cloud identities and their associated entitlements across various cloud service providers. They offer comprehensive visibility into who has access to what resources, enabling organizations to discover, monitor, and manage access rights for both human and non-human identities (such as applications, services, and machines) in real time, which is vital for implementing the principle of least privilege and maintaining a strong security posture.

CIEM Makes a Difference
CIEM solutions provide comprehensive visibility and control over cloud identities and their associated entitlements. These tools offer several critical capabilities:

• Entitlement discovery and visibility across multicloud environments
• Automated detection and remediation of overprivileged accounts
• Continuous monitoring of access patterns and anomalies
• Policy enforcement and compliance management
• Integration with existing identity and access management (IAM) systems

By leveraging advanced analytics and machine learning, CIEM solutions can identify risky permissions, recommend least-privilege policies, and automate the process of rightsizing entitlements.

CIEM is Critical for Robust Cloud Security
Adopting CIEM has become essential for organizations seeking to maintain a strong security posture in the cloud. Here’s why CIEM is crucial:

• Cloud environment complexity: Manual access rights management across multiple cloud platforms is infeasible and error-prone.
• Proliferation of non-human identities: CIEM addresses the growing number of machine identities, APIs, and ephemeral resources requiring access management.
• Security risk mitigation: By enforcing least privilege access, CIEM helps reduce the attack surface and minimize the potential impact of compromised accounts.
• Compliance requirements: CIEM assists organizations in meeting regulatory standards by providing detailed audit trails and enforcing access policies.

CIEM is Evolving
The CIEM market is rapidly evolving to meet the changing needs of cloud-native organizations. Critical trends in CIEM evolution include:

• Integration with broader cloud security platforms: CIEM is increasingly being incorporated into broader solutions like cloud native application protection platforms (CNAPP) and cloud security posture management (CSPM).
• Advanced analytics and AI: CIEM solutions are leveraging more sophisticated machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities to provide proactive risk assessment and automated remediation.
• Support for multicloud and hybrid environments: CIEM tools are expanding their capabilities to provide consistent entitlement management across diverse cloud ecosystems.
• Focus on the user experience: CIEM solutions are improving their interfaces and workflows to make complex entitlement management more accessible to security teams.

CIEM represents a critical evolution in cloud security, addressing the unique challenges of managing identities and access in dynamic, distributed environments. As the technology matures, organizations can expect CIEM to play an increasingly central role in their cloud security strategies, providing the granular control and visibility needed to navigate the complex landscape of cloud entitlements to maintain a robust security posture.

Business Imperative
Deploying a CIEM solution is crucial for organizations aiming to effectively manage and secure their cloud environments. CIEM enables organizations to enhance operational efficiency by automating manual tasks and reducing complexity, improving their security posture by providing real-time visibility, quickly detecting and responding to threats, and ensuring compliance with industry regulations through continuous monitoring and reporting capabilities. By proactively identifying and addressing security risks and compliance issues, CIEM solutions help mitigate the potential impact of breaches and violations, ultimately ensuring business continuity by reducing the risk of data loss and downtime.

Sector Adoption Score
To help executives and decision-makers assess the potential impact and value of deploying a CIEM solution, this GigaOm Key Criteria report provides a structured assessment of the sector across five factors: benefit, maturity, urgency, impact, and effort. By scoring each factor based on how strongly it compels or deters adopting a CIEM solution, we provide an overall Sector Adoption Score (Figure 1) of 4.2 out of 5, with 5 indicating the strongest possible recommendation to adopt. This indicates that a CIEM solution is a credible candidate for deployment and worthy of thoughtful consideration.

The following Sector Brief section explains in more detail the factors contributing to the Sector Adoption Score for CIEM.

Figure 1. Sector Adoption Score for CIEM

This is the second year that GigaOm has reported on the CIEM space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This report builds on our previous analysis and considers how the market has evolved over the last year.

This GigaOm Key Criteria report highlights the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) for selecting an effective CIEM solution. The companion GigaOm Radar report identifies vendors and products that match those decision criteria. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading CIEM offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions to make a more informed investment decision.