Introduction.

Cloud Infrastructure as a Service offers organizations, virtual machines, storage, and other network services over the Internet. The usage of cloud infrastructure is gaining popularity as they take advantage of IaaS to cut costs and increase flexibility.

However, it has become a major challenge for enterprises to identify who has access to these assets and data across cloud platforms. This leads organisations to be at risk as they will have limited visibility to the data or assets that would be accessed by identities belonging to their organisations, contractors, and non-human identities. This could data loss or insider Threat activities.

Major security vendors have advised enterprises adopt a Zero Trust Model or Least Privilege policy model to ensure attackers do not get the right privileges to exploit through identity with misconfigured permissions and hence a framework was laid out to create an approach towards proper identity, access, and permissions across multi-cloud environments. Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management was created by Gartner towards addressing these concerns

In this blog post, we’ll explain what Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management is and why you need it for your business.

What is Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management?

Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management is the practice of managing access and service-level agreements (SLAs) for cloud services. It’s important to manage cloud entitlements because they give users access to specific components of the cloud environment, such as storage, databases, and servers. This can help IT teams increase security and compliance, and it can help users have a better experience by providing access to only the tools they need to do their job. Entitlements can also be used for charging back, which is when a company bills a user based on metered use of specific services. Using charge backs with cloud services can help your company monitor spending and save money on cloud services.

Why is Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management Important?

Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management is important because it can help improve security, meet compliance requirements, and provide employees access to the right tools.

Cloud Management Platforms (CMP) can be used to implement entitlement management. A CMP is a cloud service that can manage your company’s cloud environment by setting up user roles and permissions, monitoring services, and tracking SLAs.

Some examples of CMPs include AWS Management Console, Microsoft Azure Portal, and Google Cloud Platform Console.

With CIEM solutions, you can track and control access permissions for resources, services, and administrative accounts across public clouds, such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. As a result of artificial intelligence-powered analysis and assessment, leading CIEM solutions identify and rank configuration errors, shadow admin accounts, and excessive entitlements for humans, applications, and machines. In this way, cloud security teams can prioritize remediations to address first while developing a phased approach to risk reduction that is proactive and well-informed. CyberArk leads the industry when it comes to CIEM solutions.

Tips to Manage Your Company’s Cloud Infrastructure Entitlements

Use resources with run-only rights- Some cloud services, like databases, are best accessed with run-only rights. This means the software won’t be installed on your virtual machine. Instead, you’ll use it as a resource that can be accessed by anyone with the right permissions.  

Use resources with consensus rights- Other cloud services, like data analytics software, can be accessed with consensus rights. This means anyone who has access to the virtual machine where the software is installed must agree to any changes made to the software.

Use resources with authorisation rights– You can use some cloud services with authorisation rights. This means only people with access to the virtual machine where the software is installed can access the data.Authorization rights work well when you want to protect your data. They’re also helpful if you want to manage access to certain tools, such as data analytics software, so that only a select group of people can access that data.

However, they can make it harder for engineers to access the software they need to do their job because they have to get approval from a manager each time, they want to make a change.

Conclusion

Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management is important because it allows you to manage your company’s access to cloud services. This can help improve security, meet compliance requirements, and provide employees access to the right tools.