CIEM vs IAM? Which one should you use? How should you manage your users? I like to joke that identity management in modern software is all about everyone who should log in being able to, and everyone who can’t log in not being able to. The reality is that there’s more to think about than that. Moreover, the sheer variety of technologies and systems to control leads to a need for specialized identity management to handle specific use cases. In this post, we’re going to talk about CIEM and how it relates to IAM, and how they both relate to your company.
Definition of CIEM
Cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) is the process of managing identities and capabilities related to cloud computing platforms. The most effective cloud administrators organize user access via the principle of least privilege. That means that users only have access to the specific resources that they need to do their job. This applies to both the ability to read cloud configurations and write those cloud configurations. CIEM is the method that we use to describe those methods of control.
Definition of IAM
Identity and access management (IAM) describes the method of identifying and controlling access to computing resources across your entire business and all of your technological assets. A wise technology manager approaches securing all assets using the principle of least privilege. In this way, CIEM can be thought of as a subset of IAM, but IAM usually focuses on more generalized concepts than CIEM, which focuses on challenges specifically related to cloud environments.
CIEM vs IAM: 3 Critical Differences
| Category | IAM | CIEM |
|---|---|---|
| Focus and objective | Focuses on identity management across your entire technology suite and applications. | Focuses on cloud computing providers and the specific requirements of securing those resources |
| Target audience | Both internal and external stakeholders. Users of your applications and internal users who need access to privileged resources. | Exclusively internal users, and only users who are going to interact with cloud computing resources. A much smaller group |
| Security approaches | Focuses on security approaches that work for non-technical users. | Focuses on security approaches that work for highly technical users. Much more secure |
Key Differences Between CIEM and IAM
1. Focus and Objective
One key difference between CIEM and IAM is their focus and objective. IAM is a generalized identity management strategy, which means that it doesn’t necessarily have any specific focus. As we noted, no matter how general your approach is, you still need to use wise security principles. Just because you’re using a generalized approach doesn’t mean that you eliminate concepts like the principle of least privilege.
However, CIEM is hyperfocused on identity management surrounding cloud computing resources. These resources are often much more complicated and also more sensitive than more generalized technical assets. Someone gaining unauthorized access to your cloud management console can do a lot of damage very quickly. Even an employee who might otherwise be permitted to configure certain cloud assets can inadvertently cause quite a bit of a stir.
As a result, CIEM provides fine-grained access control to high-value resources and focuses on making that easy. IAM focuses on generalized access management across your entire suite of technology resources.
2. Target Audience
Because CIEM is focused so tightly on high-value internal resources, the audience for CIEM approaches is much more narrow than your generalized IAM approach. Your CIEM strategy is not going to apply to external customers, and it’s not going to apply to nontechnical users. The only people who will ever need access to configure your cloud resources are people working within your technology organization. Executives salespeople and customer support agents will never need to spin up new cloud computing resources.
IAM takes a much broader approach. It covers how you manage access to all of your technology resources. That means that your IAM strategy needs to cover your customers. It needs to think about how your salespeople will log into your CRM. You need to have a plan for how your customer service agents will access your ticketing system.
3. Security Approaches
We’ve covered that CIEM and IAM are focused on different types of resources. But because of that, it’s common for CIEM and IAM to focus on different audiences, too. Because your IAM strategy manages identities across your entire technology library, your strategy necessarily needs to focus on a wide variety of users. Often, this means approaches that cater to non-technical users.
CIEM focuses on a much more technically inclined audience. This likely means that you’re requiring security capabilities like 2-factor authentication. It may even mean that you require things like hardware authentication keys, or require integration with your corporate single sign-on solution.
Advantages of CIEM
Adopting a CIEM strategy comes with a number of benefits. The first and foremost benefit is enhancing your cloud security posture. Chances are, you run your business on the cloud. Any unplanned disruption in your cloud provider(s) is going to cost your business real money. By adopting a comprehensive CIEM strategy, you minimize risks related to unauthorized access to those cloud resources.
It isn’t just unauthorized access that you need to worry about, though. A CIEM strategy minimizes your risks related to otherwise authorized users accessing systems that they’re not familiar with. Perhaps you’ve got a team that’s an expert on your database services but doesn’t know anything about your web servers. A CIEM strategy that doesn’t allow that team any access to your web servers on your cloud provider means they can’t accidentally make a change that disrupts day-to-day operations.
Finally, CIEM solutions often integrate directly with technologies like single sign-on providers like Okta. This means that you can automatically provision and de-provision users within your cloud environment and use things like group management to map a user’s group memberships to cloud resource access.
Advantages of IAM
Adopting a comprehensive IAM strategy also comes with some real advantages. Many companies will adopt the aforementioned single sign-on provider to make it easy to log into applications across the technology repertoire for employees and sometimes even customers too. When you adopt technology like that, it also means that you simplify things like employee onboarding. Adding a new user to all of your applications is something you do quickly and easily from a centralized management console, instead of needing to add that same user to systems across your environment.
An additional bonus of a comprehensive IAM strategy is that you can comply with rules and regulations that govern your business. You can conclusively identify which people took which actions on which services at which times. For highly regulated industries, this ability to audit user actions is a key requirement and one of the best parts of IAM restrictions.
Challenges and Limitations
Let’s explore the challenges and limitations of CIEM vs IAM solutions.
CIEM Challenges
Even though CIEM strategies come with real benefits, they also come with key challenges. It’s good to know what these challenges are so that you can plan for them as you start to scope out your implementation.
The most important thing to keep in mind with your CIEM approach is that it’s going to be a complicated integration. This makes a lot of sense: cloud computing environments are complicated webs of resources and capabilities. Wrapping permissions around those systems is not going to be straightforward. In addition, the more complicated your cloud environment, the more difficult it will be to set up your own integration. That work is worth it, but you should expect that you’re going to need to spend time mapping out your resources and thinking critically about who needs access to them.
Another key consideration for CIEM implementations is that you may have some difficulty integrating with your existing user management system. Adopting mainstream technologies for your cloud provider and user management system will help alleviate this complexity. You may find that there’s a ready-made integration for the technologies you’ve chosen. But even when there is, it’s not always a trivial plug-and-play operation.
IAM Challenges
IAM is also worth working with, but like CIEM, comes with some built-in challenges.
For starters, IAM needs to cover a lot of ground. That can make scaling your approach difficult. There’s simply an awful lot to think about, and whatever technologies you choose to support your system needs to support everything from high-value systems down to your least technologically capable users.
Another key consideration with IAM is that it’s a constantly evolving threat landscape. Because you need to support users of all stripes, you can’t use security systems that require lots of technological aptitude. This makes your attack surface broader. And a broader user base means that you’re more vulnerable to nontechnical attacks like account phishing.
When to Choose: CIEM vs IAM
If you’re trying to decide whether to choose between CIEM vs IAM, then the case is pretty clear: If you’re looking to secure cloud environments and resources, you want to adopt a CIEM strategy. If you’re looking to secure more traditional enterprise resources, IAM is the approach for you.
How SentinelOne Helps?
SentinelOne helps secure your systems, whether you’re using CIEM or IAM. SentinelOne uses an AI-based approach that helps detect and block threats against traditional user management endpoints and cloud endpoints equally well.
SentinelOne offers an agentless CNAPP that combines a unique Offensive Security Engine with AI-powered threat defense across servers and containers. It includes Cloud Data Security (CDS), Cloud Workload Security, Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM). Cloud Threat Intelligence Engine, and more.
Its core key features for CIEM and IAM security include:
- Singularity™ Identity provides real-time defenses for your cloud infrastructure entitlements. It deceives in-network adversaries with holistic solutions for Active Directory and Entra ID.
- It detects in-progress identity attacks against domain controllers and endpoints originating from any managed or unmanaged devices running any OS. Integrates data and SOAR actions with your existing identity governance solutions.
- Enables integrations and cross-platform security actions within one UI with Singularity™ Marketplace.
- Singularity Identity Detection & Response contains in-network threat actors and insiders in real-time by making lateral movement exponentially more difficult.
- Singularity™ Hologram decoys ICS-SCADA systems, Windows and Linux OSes, serverless and cloud storage technologies, POS systems, network routers and switches, and more. Singularity™ Endpoint protects endpoints, servers, mobile devices, and provides superior visibility with enterprise-wide prevention and detection.
- Singularity™ Identity Posture Management can uncover vulnerabilities in Active Directory and Entra ID. It gives additional AD attack detection and conditional access capabilities to protect enterprise identity infrastructure with Singularity™ Identity for Identity Providers (IdPs). You can reduce your AD attack surface, continuously analyze identity exposure, and detect live ID attacks. Understand device-level AD attack paths, OS issues, rogue domain controllers, and more. Achieve full coverage for on-premises Active Directory, Entra ID, and multi-cloud environments.
- Singularity™ Network Discovery is a cloud delivered, software-defined network discovery solution designed to add global visibility and control with minimal friction. Network Discovery extends the Sentinel agent function and reports what it sees on networks. It enables the blocking of unauthorized devices and can customize scanning policies. Network Discovery reveals vital information about IP-enabled devices and produces inventories in seconds across your region or the globe.
See SentinelOne in Action
Discover how AI-powered cloud security can protect your organization in a one-on-one demo with a SentinelOne product expert.
Get a DemoWrapping Up
CIEM and IAM are both needed by your enterprise if you want holistic cloud security. You can’t function without either and as threats evolve, you will need to refine your cyber security strategy. We’ve learned by comparing IAM vs CIEM security features that each has its pros and cons.
If you’re interested in how SentinelOne can help your company’s user management, please drop us a line and we’d love to help. We can assist your team in strengthening your CIEM and IAM security. Book a free live demo with us; you can test out our CIEM vs IAM security features and find out if our platform is a right fit for you.
FAQs
CIEM is a specialized version of IAM. It places its focus on identities and Access control in the cloud. IAM isn’t specialized: it manages identities and entitlement across all infrastructure.
If you use a lot of cloud services, you should be looking at CIEM. If you have a broad mix of cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments, consider IAM.
IAM simplifies user provisioning and de-provisioning, enhances security, and satisfies and reports on compliance. It reduces the risk of unauthorized access and breaches with authentication and authorization mechanisms like MFA, SSO, and RBAC.
CIEM helps detect potential security issues and generate alerts. It also helps align entitlements with compliance requirements and detect instances of “drift.”
