¶ Prisma Cloud Cloud Security Posture Management
¶ Cyber security
As organizations continue to migrate to the cloud, the complexity of securing cloud environments has grown exponentially. What once was a manageable task in on-premises data centers is now spread across multiple cloud providers, virtualized infrastructure, microservices, containers, and various platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings. The cloud promises flexibility, scalability, and innovation, but with those benefits come a new set of risks and challenges. For security professionals, this new world requires adapting old strategies to a rapidly evolving landscape—one where traditional security models often fail to keep up.
This is where Prisma Cloud and its Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) capabilities come in. In today’s cloud-native world, where infrastructure is dynamic and ever-changing, securing your cloud environment requires more than just point-in-time assessments or reactive monitoring. It requires a continuous, proactive approach to ensure that security controls, compliance policies, and best practices are consistently applied and adapted to the cloud ecosystem.
Prisma Cloud’s CSPM capabilities are designed to give you the tools, visibility, and control needed to manage the security and compliance of cloud environments—whether they are hosted on public cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, or on hybrid and multi-cloud architectures. As businesses increasingly rely on the cloud, understanding how to implement a comprehensive cloud security posture management strategy has become an essential skill for every cybersecurity professional. This course is your guide to mastering that strategy, using Prisma Cloud as the foundation.
When you begin your journey into CSPM with Prisma Cloud, you quickly realize how different cloud security is compared to traditional on-premises environments. The dynamic, ephemeral nature of cloud infrastructure—where resources can be spun up and down on demand—introduces new challenges. Unlike traditional environments where security perimeter management (firewalls, access control lists, etc.) is relatively straightforward, the cloud is fluid. Resources and applications can migrate between different environments, and there’s no single, static perimeter to defend.
This is where Prisma Cloud’s CSPM capabilities really shine. CSPM tools help manage cloud security by continuously monitoring the configuration of cloud environments and ensuring they adhere to security best practices, compliance regulations, and organizational policies. The goal isn’t just to react to incidents but to prevent them from happening in the first place—by preventing misconfigurations, unauthorized access, or risky deployments that could lead to vulnerabilities or breaches.
As you move through this course, you'll gain a deeper understanding of how to leverage Prisma Cloud’s powerful CSPM features to provide comprehensive protection for your cloud environments. You’ll learn how to identify, manage, and remediate security risks and ensure compliance across multiple cloud platforms. The course covers the full spectrum of cloud security posture management, from initial setup to ongoing management, remediation, and optimization.
¶ The Cloud Security Landscape and CSPM
Before diving into Prisma Cloud’s specific tools and capabilities, it’s important to first grasp the broader landscape of cloud security and CSPM. The cloud environment is often described as a shared responsibility model. While the cloud provider manages the security of the cloud infrastructure (networking, servers, and storage), the customer is responsible for securing what they deploy on top of that infrastructure, including applications, user data, and configurations.
In a cloud environment, risks are often introduced through misconfigurations or insecure practices. For example, an S3 bucket configured to be publicly accessible might expose sensitive data, or an IAM (Identity and Access Management) role might grant excessive permissions to users or services, creating opportunities for privilege escalation or lateral movement in the event of a compromise.
This is where Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) becomes crucial. CSPM is the practice of continuously monitoring and managing the configuration of your cloud environments to ensure that they adhere to security best practices and compliance standards. CSPM tools—like Prisma Cloud—help you identify and mitigate these risks before they become threats, ensuring that your cloud infrastructure remains secure and compliant at all times.
With the rapid pace of cloud adoption, many organizations have embraced DevOps, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), and other cloud-native practices. While these practices help organizations innovate quickly, they also introduce additional complexity into security management. Resources can be provisioned and decommissioned quickly, making it difficult to track and maintain security controls.
Prisma Cloud, with its real-time monitoring and automated security policy enforcement, provides a solution for this problem. It ensures that security is continuously applied throughout the development lifecycle, helping security teams manage their cloud environment’s security posture in an automated, scalable manner.
¶ Understanding Prisma Cloud
Prisma Cloud is a comprehensive cloud-native security platform designed to protect cloud environments across multiple cloud service providers and technologies. Its CSPM capabilities help security teams identify, assess, and remediate risks in real-time. Prisma Cloud not only focuses on the configuration and security posture of cloud infrastructure but also extends into container security, serverless security, and other cloud-native technologies.
One of the core features of Prisma Cloud’s CSPM is its cloud asset visibility. Prisma Cloud automatically discovers all assets in your cloud environment, giving you a comprehensive view of your cloud resources, including virtual machines, containers, storage, databases, and more. It allows you to track and monitor configurations, permissions, and any changes to these resources in real time, providing continuous insight into the state of your environment.
Additionally, Prisma Cloud’s configuration auditing feature scans your cloud resources for compliance against best practices and industry standards, such as CIS benchmarks, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and others. It not only ensures that your resources are configured securely but also generates reports that demonstrate compliance with various regulatory frameworks, which is essential for industries that are required to follow strict security and privacy guidelines.
The risk and vulnerability management capabilities of Prisma Cloud are another standout feature. It continuously monitors your cloud infrastructure for known vulnerabilities, outdated packages, and exposed ports, giving you visibility into the overall risk posture of your environment. Through integrated threat intelligence feeds, Prisma Cloud can even detect new vulnerabilities as they emerge, ensuring that your environment remains protected against the latest threats.
¶ Benefits of Prisma Cloud for CSPM
The benefits of adopting Prisma Cloud for Cloud Security Posture Management are numerous:
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Comprehensive Coverage: Prisma Cloud provides continuous monitoring of your cloud environment, covering everything from virtual machines to containers, serverless environments, and Kubernetes clusters. This holistic coverage ensures that no part of your infrastructure is left unmonitored.
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Automated Remediation: One of the key advantages of using Prisma Cloud for CSPM is its ability to automatically remediate configuration drift and other issues. When a misconfiguration or policy violation is detected, Prisma Cloud can trigger automated workflows to fix the issue without requiring manual intervention, reducing the time to resolution.
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Compliance Assurance: Prisma Cloud helps organizations adhere to various compliance standards (like GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS) by offering pre-built policy templates and tools for audit reporting. This makes it easier for security teams to demonstrate compliance and avoid potential regulatory fines or legal challenges.
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Real-Time Risk Management: With Prisma Cloud, risks are identified and mitigated in real time. This proactive approach to risk management helps prevent security breaches before they occur, rather than reacting to them after the fact.
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Centralized Visibility: Prisma Cloud provides a centralized console that aggregates security and compliance data from across your cloud environment. This unified view helps security teams prioritize their efforts and focus on the most critical vulnerabilities or misconfigurations that could pose the greatest risk.
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Scalability: As organizations grow and scale their cloud environments, Prisma Cloud scales with them. Its ability to handle complex, multi-cloud architectures and large volumes of data ensures that security teams can maintain a consistent security posture even as cloud infrastructure evolves.
¶ How This Course Will Help You Master Prisma Cloud for CSPM
As you progress through this course, you will learn how to deploy, configure, and manage Prisma Cloud for CSPM in real-world scenarios. You will explore its features and capabilities in depth, understanding how to use the platform to continuously monitor, secure, and optimize your cloud environments. You’ll learn about best practices for implementing security policies, performing risk assessments, managing compliance, and remediating vulnerabilities.
Each article in this course will take you through a different aspect of Prisma Cloud’s CSPM functionality, from setting up monitoring and scanning cloud resources to automating remediation workflows and maintaining compliance. By the end of the course, you will be equipped with the knowledge and hands-on experience necessary to effectively manage and secure cloud environments using Prisma Cloud.
More importantly, you’ll develop a mindset of proactive cloud security. Cloud environments require constant vigilance, but with the right tools and strategy in place, you can reduce risk, optimize compliance, and ensure that your organization remains secure as it continues to innovate in the cloud.
¶ Prisma Cloud Cloud Security Posture Management
I. Introduction & Foundations (1-10)
1. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) Fundamentals
2. Introduction to Prisma Cloud CSPM: Core Concepts
3. Understanding Prisma Cloud Architecture and Components
4. Setting up Prisma Cloud: Initial Configuration and Onboarding
5. Navigating the Prisma Cloud Console: An Overview
6. Understanding Prisma Cloud Licenses and Deployment Options
7. Setting up the CSPM Environment: Best Practices
8. Introduction to Cloud Security Best Practices and Frameworks
9. Key Concepts: Resources, Policies, Compliance, and Remediation
10. Building Your First Cloud Security Dashboard
II. Cloud Account Onboarding & Integration (11-20)
11. Onboarding AWS Accounts to Prisma Cloud
12. Onboarding Azure Subscriptions to Prisma Cloud
13. Onboarding GCP Projects to Prisma Cloud
14. Multi-Cloud Account Management
15. Integrating with AWS Organizations
16. Integrating with Azure Management Groups
17. Integrating with GCP Organizations
18. Cloud Account Discovery and Inventory
19. Service Account Management
20. Managing Cloud Provider Credentials Securely
III. Visibility & Inventory (21-35)
21. Real-time Visibility into Cloud Resources
22. Asset Inventory and Management
23. Resource Tagging and Organization
24. Cloud Asset Metadata and Properties
25. Security Configuration Assessment
26. Vulnerability Scanning of Cloud Resources
27. Compliance Scanning and Reporting
28. Data Discovery and Classification in the Cloud
29. Network Security Visibility
30. Identity and Access Management (IAM) Visibility
31. Data Security Posture Assessment (DSPA)
32. Threat Intelligence and Cloud Visibility
33. Cloud Security Analytics and Insights
34. Resource Relationship Mapping
35. Visualizing Cloud Security Posture
IV. Compliance & Governance (36-50)
36. Cloud Compliance Standards and Frameworks (e.g., NIST, CIS, PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR)
37. Implementing Compliance Policies in Prisma Cloud
38. Generating Compliance Reports
39. Automating Compliance Checks
40. Compliance Remediation and Workflow
41. Audit Logging and Trail Analysis
42. Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Integration
43. Policy Management and Enforcement
44. Exception Management and Approvals
45. Compliance Dashboards and Metrics
46. Customizing Compliance Policies
47. Mapping Controls to Compliance Standards
48. Managing Compliance Evidence
49. Compliance Best Practices
50. Building a Cloud Compliance Program
V. Security Configuration & Hardening (51-65)
51. Security Configuration Assessment
52. Hardening Cloud Resources
53. Security Best Practices Implementation
54. Identifying Misconfigurations
55. Security Recommendations and Remediation
56. Automating Security Hardening
57. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security Scanning
58. Container Security Posture Management (CSPM)
59. Serverless Security Posture Management (SSPM)
60. Data Security Posture Management (DSPA)
61. Network Security Configuration
62. Identity and Access Management (IAM) Hardening
63. Encryption and Key Management
64. Vulnerability Management in the Cloud
65. Threat Detection and Prevention
VI. Identity & Access Management (IAM) Security (66-75)
66. IAM Best Practices
67. Least Privilege Implementation
68. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
69. Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) Integration
70. Access Key Management
71. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Enforcement
72. Privileged Access Management (PAM) Integration
73. Service Account Security
74. Identity Federation and SSO
75. IAM Auditing and Monitoring
VII. Data Security & Protection (76-85)
76. Data at Rest Encryption
77. Data in Transit Encryption
78. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) in the Cloud
79. Data Classification and Tagging
80. Database Security
81. Storage Security
82. Key Management and Encryption
83. Data Masking and Tokenization
84. Data Access Control
85. Data Security Posture Assessment (DSPA)
VIII. Threat Detection & Response (86-90)
86. Threat Intelligence Integration
87. Anomaly Detection
88. Behavioral Analysis
89. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Integration
90. Incident Response in the Cloud
IX. Automation & Integration (91-95)
91. Automating Remediation Actions
92. Integrating with DevOps Tools
93. API Integration with Prisma Cloud
94. Workflow Automation
95. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security Integration
X. Advanced Topics & Best Practices (96-100)
96. Multi-Cloud Security Management
97. Cloud Security Architecture
98. Cloud Security Best Practices
99. Cost Optimization for Cloud Security
100. The Future of Cloud Security Posture Management