Cloud Security Posture Management Tools 2026
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) continuously inspects your cloud accounts for misconfigurations, risky permissions, and compliance drift before an attacker or an auditor finds them first. These tools connect to AWS, Azure, GCP, and increasingly Kubernetes and SaaS control planes to map what you actually have running, flag the public S3 bucket or over-privileged IAM role, and check it all against frameworks like CIS, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and HIPAA. The category exists because cloud breaches rarely come from clever exploits. They come from a setting someone left wrong, and at cloud scale you cannot eyeball that by hand. CISOs reach for CSPM when their cloud footprint outgrows the security team's ability to track it manually.
We cover 101 Cloud Security Posture Management tools, 52 free and 49 commercial.
Accuracy and depth improve over time. Last reviewed Sep 2026. Is something off? Reach out.
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New to this category? What is Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)?
Cloud & database asset intelligence platform for visibility & compliance
AI-native cloud governance platform for cost optimization and compliance
Scans IaC files for misconfigurations before deployment to production.
A security toolkit for Amazon S3 that provides bucket scanning, policy validation, ACL management, and encryption features to identify and remediate S3 security vulnerabilities.
A Burp Suite extension that uses Shodan to discover cloud buckets and tests them for publicly accessible vulnerabilities through passive scanning.
Automate AWS security checks and centralize security alerts.
Centrally Manage Cloud Firewall Rules with AWS Firewall Manager
Assess, audit, and evaluate configurations of AWS resources.
Comprehensive set of security controls for various AWS services to ensure a secure cloud environment.
AI-Powered Cloud Assistant for building, securing, and operating cloud environments.
A tool for redirecting HTTP and HTTPS requests to other URLs.
A community repository of custom AWS Config rules for evaluating AWS resource configurations against compliance and security standards.
ZeusCloud is an open source cloud security platform that discovers AWS assets, identifies attack paths, and provides remediation guidance with customizable compliance controls.
Network Access Analyzer is an AWS VPC feature that identifies unintended network access to cloud resources by analyzing internet gateways, route tables, ACLs, and security groups.
Komiser is an open-source cloud-agnostic resource manager that analyzes and manages cloud cost, usage, security, and governance across multiple cloud providers in a unified platform.
Zeus is an AWS security auditing and hardening tool that evaluates cloud configurations against CIS benchmarks and can automatically apply recommended security settings.
PrismX is a cloud security dashboard that provides centralized AWS security monitoring based on CIS benchmarks with JIRA integration for issue management.
Krampus is an AWS resource management tool that automates the deletion and disabling of cloud objects based on JSON task files for security remediation and cost control.
Watchmen is a framework that centralizes AWS Config rule lambda functions into a single account for streamlined compliance management and automation.
Cloud Custodian is a YAML-based rules engine that manages and enforces security, compliance, and cost optimization policies across AWS, Azure, and GCP cloud environments in real-time.
Ice is an AWS cloud cost management tool that provides multi-level visibility into cloud spending and resource utilization to support informed reservation purchases and resource optimization decisions.
A cloud security analysis tool that creates digital twins of AWS environments using graph databases to identify attack paths and security misconfigurations through automated and manual rule-based assessments.
A Terraform module that establishes security baseline configurations for AWS accounts based on CIS benchmarks and AWS security best practices.
An automated AWS security compliance remediation system that uses Lambda functions and SQS queues to automatically fix security violations detected by AWS Config.
How to choose Cloud Security Posture Management tools
- Confirm real coverage across every cloud and service you run, not just the headline AWS, Azure, and GCP support. Gaps in Kubernetes, serverless, or niche services leave blind spots.
- Weigh prioritization quality. A tool that surfaces 4,000 findings is noise; one that tells you which dozen form an exploitable attack path is signal.
- Demand low false-positive rates and test them against your own accounts before buying. Alert fatigue kills adoption faster than missing features.
- Check that built-in compliance packs match the frameworks your auditors use, with evidence export that survives an actual audit.
- Verify it deploys agentlessly through read-only API roles so onboarding is fast and you are not pushing software into production workloads.
- Look at remediation depth: clear fix steps, infrastructure-as-code suggestions, and ticketing or pipeline integration so findings actually get closed, not just logged.
Cloud Security Posture Management Tools FAQ
Common questions about Cloud Security Posture Management tools, selection guides, pricing, and comparisons.
CSPM is a category of tools that continuously read the configuration of your cloud environments through provider APIs and flag anything risky: public storage, exposed databases, weak identity permissions, unencrypted data, and drift away from compliance baselines. Rather than scanning workloads from the inside, it audits the control plane itself, the settings that define how your cloud is built and who can touch it.
CSPM focuses on configuration and compliance of cloud resources. CWPP secures the running workloads themselves: VMs, containers, functions. CIEM zeroes in on identities and entitlements. CNAPP is the umbrella platform that bundles all three plus more. Many vendors started as CSPM and grew outward, so the lines blur. If your core problem is misconfiguration and audit readiness, CSPM is the precise term for what you need.
Test it against your real accounts, not a demo tenant. Judge coverage across every cloud and service you run, the accuracy of its risk prioritization, how few false positives it throws, and whether it explains how to fix each finding. Check that it maps to the compliance frameworks your auditors actually use, and confirm it deploys agentlessly through API roles so onboarding takes hours, not weeks.
AWS Security Hub, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and GCP Security Command Center give you a solid baseline at low cost inside a single cloud. The case for a dedicated tool grows when you run multiple clouds and want one consistent view, need risk context that correlates findings into real attack paths, or want compliance reporting and remediation guidance that native tools handle thinly. Single-cloud shops on a tight budget often start native and upgrade later.
Most CSPM tools detect and prioritize by default, then hand you remediation steps, infrastructure-as-code snippets, or ticketing integrations. Auto-remediation exists but teams usually gate it carefully, since closing a port or changing an IAM policy without context can break production. The practical value early on is accurate detection and clear guidance. Automated fixes come later, once you trust the tool's judgment.
