Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management: The Key to Control and Compliance in Multi-Cloud Environments

The cloud has become the backbone of modern IT environments. With hybrid and multi-cloud strategies now the standard, organizations gain flexibility, scalability, and cost efficiency—but at the same time face a growing challenge: managing identities and permissions across increasingly complex landscapes. This is where Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) comes in. It has become essential for protecting sensitive resources and meeting strict regulatory requirements.

The Challenge: Visibility and Control in the Cloud Permission Jungle

In traditional on-premises setups, permissions could be centrally managed through systems like Active Directory. In the cloud, the situation changes dramatically: each platform—AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, or any SaaS provider—comes with its own roles, policies, APIs, and permission models.

The result is a fragmented entitlement landscape with thousands of identities often over-provisioned, outdated, and lacking transparency.

Many organizations today cannot say with certainty:

• Who actually has access to which cloud resources
• Whether these permissions are still needed
• Whether they comply with standards like ISO 27001, GDPR, or industry-specific regulations

This leads to expanding attack surfaces, unnecessary privileges, and real risks of data leakage or compliance violations.

CIEM: Restoring Transparency, Analysis, and Automation

A strong CIEM strategy brings back visibility, governance, and control in cloud access management. A CIEM platform aggregates entitlement data from all cloud services and analyzes it centrally. It identifies risks such as:

• Over-provisioned accounts (excessive permissions)
• Unused or orphaned identities
• Shadow administrators and misconfigurations
• Violations of least-privilege principles

Based on this analysis, organizations can automatically enforce policies, optimize permissions, and generate compliance reports at the push of a button. For security, audit, and compliance teams, CIEM has become an indispensable tool.

Seamless Integration with IAM and IGA Systems

Most organizations already work with Identity & Access Management (IAM) and Identity Governance & Administration (IGA) tools. But these systems reach their limits when it comes to cloud-native environments such as containers, dynamic workloads, or DevOps pipelines. This is where CIEM adds significant value.

By integrating CIEM into existing IAM/IGA architectures, companies gain full cloud visibility. For example: A company already uses an IGA solution to manage accounts, workflows, and recertifications. Once CIEM is connected, cloud-specific permissions—such as Azure AD or AWS IAM roles—are continuously analyzed.

• Unified visibility of all entitlements across on-premises and cloud
• Automated cleanup of non-compliant permissions
• End-to-end compliance reporting
• Reduced audit effort and security risks

A leading German industrial company with over 10,000 employees provides a real-world example. After implementing CIEM alongside its existing IGA tools, the organization gained full visibility into all cloud accounts. Within weeks, more than 30% of unnecessary permissions were automatically identified and removed without disrupting operations. ISO 27001 and internal audit processes accelerated from days to minutes.