As a service provider, it's important to understand what cloud security challenges are contributing to an increase in data breaches so you can effectively support your clients' needs. Knowing which resources are available to develop a comprehensive approach to cloud security posture management (CSPM) is key. Read on to learn more about a solution that will expand your service offerings while delivering value to clients.
How to Integrate CSPM into Your Clients’ IaaS Strategy
If you're a managed service provider (MSP), managed security service provider (MSSP), or IT consultant, you want to deliver value to your clients and help them to avoid record-setting data breach costs. According to a
2024 IBM security report, about 40% of all breaches involved data distributed across multiple environments, such as public clouds, private clouds, and on premises. Data breaches solely involving public clouds were the most expensive type of data breach, costing 5.17 million USD on average, a 13.1% increase from last year.
Common Cloud Security Challenges
Oftentimes, your clients adopt cloud technology to run business-critical applications rather than investing in or purchasing hardware, software, and network infrastructures. As more applications are deployed in the cloud, large and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) experience a shift from a traditional on-premises IT infrastructure to a cloud-based IT infrastructure. For them, adopting cloud solutions offers ease of access to information, quick deployment, low IT infrastructure requirements, and, most importantly, low costs.
The increase in the adoption rate of cloud services and cloud infrastructure and platform services unfortunately brings with it an increase in complexity and unmanaged risk for your clients. Such complexity is contributing to a rise in cloud-based misconfigurations and other instances of human error.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Cyber threat actors may exploit insufficient authorization, overlapping trust boundaries, and other vulnerabilities in the cloud to distribute malware and conduct Denial of service (DoS) attacks. As a result, organizations must allocate additional resources to enhance their cloud security posture and protect against emerging threats in the cloud.
Gartner foresees that your clients and other organizations will continue to struggle with misconfigurations for years to come. They go so far as to predict that by 2026, more than half of all organizations will make preventing cloud misconfiguration a cloud security priority.
Your clients might look to other MSPs, MSSPs, and IT consultants that provide traditional Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions. But these solutions aren’t sufficiently robust. They deliver basic configuration and risk assessment capabilities that do not account for hybrid and multi-cloud capabilities. They also don’t leverage the cloud security controls your clients need to address their duties as part of the cloud shared responsibility model.
Cloud Security Posture Management as the Way Forward
Your clients have no choice but to turn to software and automation to address these security gaps. In contrast to the traditional IaaS tools discussed above, CSPM offers both.
CSPM is a vital component of cloud security, focusing on maintaining and enhancing the security posture of cloud environments. As organizations increasingly adopt cloud computing and embrace multi-cloud and hybrid cloud architectures, ensuring a strong security posture becomes paramount. CSPM solutions offer comprehensive visibility, continuous monitoring, and automated security controls to address security risks and compliance requirements across cloud infrastructures.
How CSPM Plays a Crucial Role in Cloud Security
CSPM Ensures Compliance
CSPM solutions help organizations maintain compliance with various regulatory standards and frameworks, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. They provide automated checks, policy enforcement, and real-time monitoring to detect and remediate security configuration violations.
CSPM Strengthens Security Posture
CSPM enables organizations to proactively identify cloud environments' misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and access risks. By continuously monitoring for security gaps and providing actionable insights, CSPM solutions empower organizations to strengthen their security posture and minimize the risk of data breaches.
CSPM Manages Cloud Complexity
Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments often involve multiple cloud service providers and complex infrastructure configurations. CSPM solutions offer centralized visibility and control, allowing organizations to manage security policies, track compliance status, and enforce consistent security practices across their cloud assets.
CSPM can help your clients specifically address misconfigurations and automate security assessments, remediation, and policy enforcement, facilitating seamless collaboration between development, operations, and security teams.
CIS Hardened Images: A Win-Win for You and Your Clients
To help you seize on the growth of the CSPM market and deliver value to your clients, we’ve created the CIS Hardened Images Reseller Program.
CIS Hardened Images are virtual machine images hardened with the globally recognized secure configuration recommendations of the
CIS Benchmarks™, the only vendor-neutral, independently developed configuration guidance for both public and private industry in existence. These stringent standards drastically reduce system vulnerabilities which provides you with the opportunity to deliverer an added layer of security assurance to clients. They also help organizations take a proactive approach and implement built-in security in their cloud environments that support compliance with numerous cross-industry standards.
The Reseller Program, offered by the Center for Internet Security
® (CIS
®), allow IT consultants, MSPs, MSSPs, and other resellers to sell CIS Hardened Images as part of their service offering to their customers.
Benefits CIS Hardened Images Offer Your Clients
Simplified Setup and Compliance
CIS Hardened Images streamline the process of hardening your systems, significantly reducing the time and cost associated with manually hardening a system or establishing internal rollout procedures, without compromising on quality.
Being pre-configured to the CIS Benchmarks, these images adhere strictly to internationally recognized standards, making them an appropriate solution for industries that handle sensitive data and demand stringent data protection measures, such as healthcare, finance, and government.
Versatility
CIS Hardened Images are readily available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace, AWS GovCloud (U.S. Region), and AWS for the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC); Microsoft Azure Marketplace, Microsoft Azure Government Marketplace; Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Marketplace; and Oracle Cloud Marketplace.
Supports CSPM
Your clients’ need for IaaS security strategies is growing due to the need to detect cloud malware, monitor IaaS, and check for security and compliance issues have grown as centers are moving their functions to the cloud.
Incorporating CIS Hardened Images into your clients’ IaaS strategy integrates well with other verticals in their cybersecurity architecture such as identity and access management or network traffic protection within the shared responsibility model, aiding in creating a comprehensive CSPM strategy.
CTA: Support Your Clients with CIS Hardened Images 
