9 CIEM Vendors You Need in 2025

Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) solves the problems that the current Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions have in the multi-cloud environments of the present day. Since 96% of enterprises are worried about public cloud security and 70% of cloud hosting companies have reported a public cloud breach, effective cloud entitlement management is essential. CIEM vendors offer solutions for centralizing, automating, and managing cloud entitlements across the leading cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud that use mechanisms based on rules, behavior analytics, and continuous monitoring to protect human and machine identities and prevent misconfigurations and breaches.

The term CIEM or Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management was established from the fact that cloud environments are often complex with many accounts, short-lived resources, and imprecise permissions. These issues are particularly dangerous because an over-privileged account in one microservice can potentially access some sensitive data in another region. CIEM security tries to address this by proactively identifying and removing excessive permissions and, therefore, maintaining the principle of least privilege.

What this article covers:

1. CIEM and its importance to cloud identity governance are explained in detail.
2. Some of the reasons that are forcing businesses to consider specialized CIEM vendors.
3. An analysis of nine considerable players and how each is best suited for different business demands.
4. Some areas that need to be considered when assessing CIEM products.
5. Responses to common questions on the scope and capability of the framework and how it integrates with other CIEM security frameworks.

At the end of this article, you will learn how CIEM vendors integrate entitlements and identity management within large-scale systems to minimize the potential for privilege abuse and non-compliance. First, let’s define what CIEM is and why it is different from the traditional IAM or cloud security solutions.

What is CIEM? (Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management)

Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) is valuable for managing permissions in the current cloud environments, as security was the most significant concern for 83% of companies in 2024. While traditional IAM focuses on user credentials and roles, CIEM targets the issues of multi-cloud environments. This includes the management of permissions for the following: ephemeral containers, serverless functions, microservices, and machine-to-machine communication, which are not commonly addressed by traditional IAM systems.

Unlike fundamental privilege management, CIEM security utilizes continuous scanning to identify newly developed misconfiguration or increased levels of permissions that have gradually been added up. The solution can also detect unused root-level permission for an automated task that requires only log access. CIEM vendors enable automation of least-privilege policies, hence minimizing the attack surface where one credential breach cannot lead to the complete compromise of the environment.

Key differentiators that set CIEM cloud solutions apart:

1. Granular Visibility: It displays all the permissions, roles, and policies for various accounts and services.
2. Risk-Based Insights: It gives alerts or automated fixes when a high-risk identity has privileges that are not necessary for its operation.
3. Machine Identities: It monitors not only human users but also service accounts, APIs, and short-lived entities.
4. Continuous Enforcement: It is flexible and revokes privileges as soon as they are no longer needed in a particular environment.

CIEM products also leverage cloud-native services such as AWS IAM or Azure Active Directory and third-party policy engines to extend identity governance across all layers of the cloud. This integration, therefore enables DevOps, SecOps, and compliance teams to set standard policies and thereby limit data leakage and minimize insider threats.

Need for CIEM Vendors

Today’s organizations work with hundreds (if not thousands) of user roles, groups, and machine accounts across several clouds. This sprawl is often made worse by DevOps pipelines and agile deployments, which makes it difficult to ensure that entitlements are as limited as possible.

Below are the key reasons driving businesses to adopt specialized CIEM vendors:

1. Over-Privileged Accounts: One single role that is left unused but has admin access can be a gateway for attackers. CIEM security solutions actively search and remove such excesses and thus limit the attackers’ ability to move around the system.
2. Dynamic Cloud Environments: Serverless architectures and container orchestration platforms, such as Kubernetes, spin resources on and off frequently. The traditional IAM systems sometimes fail to cope with the changing environment, while the CIEM cloud solutions identify the new resources and enforce the correct policies on them.
3. Regulatory Compliance: Laws such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR have a very stringent approach towards data privacy and access control. CIEM vendors are able to automatically create audit trails and compliance reports to show that only permitted roles have certain privileges.
4. Reduced Manual Oversight: It is a complex and time-consuming process to manage and check the permissions across the clouds and CIEM products help in this by automating the entitlement cleanup.
5. Threat Detection & Response: Some of the solutions use threat intelligence or AI-based analytics to identify abnormal access patterns that could be the result of credential theft or malicious insiders. This way of thinking is preventive and strengthens the environment against the most sophisticated attacks.
6. Cost Efficiency: Over-entitlement is a problem that results in either unintentional use of resources or incorrect configurations that increase cloud costs. Simplified entitlements help to better manage cloud resources and thus indirectly save money.

As the applications of microservices, multi-clouds, and zero-trust become more prominent, more organizations are now choosing to use specialized CIEM vendors. Now, let us find out which vendors are noteworthy in 2025 and why.

CIEM Market Vendors Landscape in 2025

In the following, we discuss nine leading CIEM vendors with their different perspectives on how to tackle over-privileged accounts and harmonize them.

These solutions use automation, analysis, and policies to solve the identity sprawl problem in the multi-cloud environment.

SentinelOne

SentinelOne’s entry into the CIEM market is primarily focused on AI-based threat detection. The platform brings a cloud-first approach to scanning entitlements in AWS, Azure, and GCP, and maps risk data to known malicious behavior. This integrated console allows security teams to have a single-screen view of the endpoint threats and identity risks, with the ability to respond in a policy-based manner. SentinelOne is one of the most intuitive tools on the market, which covers the entire lifecycle of entitlements, from discovery to revocation.

Platform at a Glance

SentinelOne’s CIEM module lies on top of its more extensive XDR framework, providing organizations with a single and comprehensive view of threat management and identity governance. Real-time monitoring detects unused or inactive accounts, users with elevated privileges, and permission changes. Granular analytics lets you focus on the most critical cases by roles or workloads that are most risky. This means that DevOps pipelines are integrated to enforce compliance from development and through to production environments.

Features:

1. Auto-Discovery: Defines every role, account, and microservice permission that exists in the whole system.
2. Risk-Based Alerts: Identifies the highest risk misconfigurations or anomalies.
3. AI-Augmented Policy Enforcement: Recommends that policies should be in a way that supports the least-privilege principle.
4. Unified Security Console: Provides endpoint, identity, and network data for endpoint analysis.

Core Problems That SentinelOne Eliminates

1. Excess Privileges: Automated audits identify areas of accounts or processes with excessive permissions.
2. Manual Policy Maintenance: Automated workflows help in monitoring entitlements without having to manually review them over and over again.
3. Threat Blind Spots: When identity data is connected with threat intelligence, possible insider or outsider threats are identified at an early stage.
4. Complex Multi-Cloud Views: Offers a single entry point for AWS, Azure, and GCP entities.

Testimonials

“Time is a valuable resource, bringing in SentinelOne was the beginning of the maturity for our security program. It was the first tool I brought into the environment. To date, I’ve received more praise for making that change than anything I’ve ever implemented.” Alex Burinskiy (MANAGER OF SECURITY ENGINEERING)

View comprehensive user feedback and testimonials for SentinelOne on Gartner Peer Insights and PeerSpot.

SailPoint

SailPoint offers access controls for multi-cloud environments. The solution focuses on identity as the basis for its risk-based policies that can be adjusted to user behavior and organizational changes. SailPoint’s focus is on compliance automation for enterprises and it also extends its identity workflows.

Features:

1. Adaptive Access Policies: It employs machine learning to recommend the permission levels that are applicable depending on the usage.
2. Lifecycle Management: Enables automated creation and deactivation of roles in the environment that is based on the cloud.
3. Centralized Dashboards: Offers an overall picture of all entitlements and usage of services.
4. Audit-Ready Reporting: Enhances the achievement of real-time logs and standard templates.

Explore user reviews and detailed insights about SailPoint on PeerSpot.

Delinea

Delinea is a PAM solution provider, and has shifted its focus to just-in-time privilege. It allows for any extended permissions to be granted for a low amount of time, thus minimizing the risk of misuse. The solution is containerized, virtual machine-based, and serverless, enabling detailed monitoring of privileged credentials usage. Delinea is ideal for organizations in need of a PAM+CIEM approach.

Features:

1. Just-in-Time (JIT) Access: Temporary administrative access and automatic removal of the access.
2. Credential Vaulting: Encapsulates machine and human credentials in a way that cannot be accessed by any other party.
3. Dynamic Policy Enforcement: Entitlements are granted based on real-time context as opposed to roles.
4. Privileged Session Monitoring: Collects the complete session logs for compliance and threat purposes.

Discover authentic feedback and ratings for Delinea on Gartner Peer Insights.

Saviynt

Saviynt has a converged identity platform that integrates identity governance with application management. Its CIEM products module focuses on cloud permissions, helping enterprises to implement micro-segmentation and least privilege at scale. It synchronizes with the human resource systems and Azure AD, meaning that any changes made to user roles or departments will automatically be seen in the cloud entitlements.

Due to risk-based intelligence, administrators are aware of where to start with the process of allocating resources to address the issues.

Features:

1. App-Centric Governance: Entitlements are tracked by application rather than just tracking infrastructure.
2. Micro-Segmentation: Restricts access to specific segments of cloud workloads.
3. Identity Lifecycle Hooks: Integrates with Human Resources or Customer Relationship Management systems for updating users’ information.
4. Risk Scoring: Describes how severe the privilege is according to the environment.

Learn what users have to say about Saviynt on PeerSpot.

Sonrai Security

Sonrai Security provides Identity Intelligence and Governance for container, serverless, and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). It assists with service-to-service privileges, an important aspect that tends to be neglected by basic IAM systems. Utilizing strong analysis, Sonrai can identify specific identity threats, such as an overly privileged Lambda function with the capability to modify S3 bucket policies.

Some of the benefits of the platform include offering visibility in the connection of multiple accounts.

Features:

1. Service Graph Analysis: Illustrates inter-service permissions to reveal concealed escalation channels.
2. Data Access Governance: Appropriate personnel who should be allowed to view data stores and how this should be done without violating compliance.
3. Integrated Remediation: Includes the procedures or the step-by-step instructions or the automated procedures to close the entitlement gaps.
4. Multi-Cloud Support: Coordinates AWS, Azure, GCP, and local/on-premise roles into one interface.

Browse genuine reviews and opinions of Sonrai Security on PeerSpot.

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks covers workload protection and CIEM. It helps detect over-privilege, roles without owners, and inherited permissions that can lead to potential risk. Prisma Cloud allows DevOps and security teams to work together by checking IaC templates for mistakes before they go live.

Each risk is showcased in context through analytics, which lets teams determine where to focus their efforts on.

Features:

1. Entitlement Mapping: Exposes service and account permission chains that are not easily visible.
2. IaC Scanning: The flags are used to overemphasize the privileged roles in Terraform, CloudFormation, or ARM templates.
3. Remediation Suggestions: Provide clear, easy-to-understand instructions or explicit code solutions for the developers.
4. Threat Intelligence: Associates entitlement data with blacklisted IPs or threat indicators.

Read firsthand experiences and insights about Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks on PeerSpot.

Ermetic

Ermetic is focused on keeping the cloud policies dynamic in order to provide constant least-privilege access. A machine learning engine that identifies usage patterns is used and if privileges differ from the norm, it signals the administrator. Ermetic is based on user and resource-oriented perspectives, and provides immediate visibility into who can do what and where, with the identification of possible attack vectors.

By using compliance dashboards, organizations can meet ISO 27001 or PCI standards by showing that minimum privilege is used.

Features:

1. Behavioral Analytics: It helps in assessing the normal behavior to enhance or deny the privilege.
2. Auto-Generated Policies: Enables the transformation of machine learning suggestions into practical IAM alterations.
3. Compliance Mapping: Maps entitlements to certain compliance controls, such as GDPR data access.
4. Role Mining: Notice typical roles and combine them, or divide them to optimize.

Find out how Ermetic is rated by users on PeerSpot.

ObserveID

ObserveID is centered on the identification of accounts, roles, and privileged credentials. It uses contextual information, such as the department of a user, his or her working hours, and location, to determine if a role is feasible or if it poses a risk. This approach ranges from traditional on-premises AD to CIEM-based cloud infrastructures to ensure that identity posture is consistent.

Through analytics, ObserveID links it to suspicious access attempts or an increased level of access to potential malicious activity.

Features:

1. Contextual Alerts: Identifies anomalies by the geo-velocity, time of the day, or cross-account access.
2. Workflow Automation: Enables managers to easily allow or disallow new permissions without much hassle.
3. Single Sign-On Integration: Supports the SSO platforms in managing the entitlements without creating any inconvenience.
4. Role Cleanup: Avoids the development of duplicate or overlapping positions, which can arise as the organization expands.

Uncover real-world feedback and evaluations for ObserveID on PeerSpot.

Check Point

Check Point tackles identity governance with CIEM. The cloud entitlement module of the solution is compatible with Check Point CloudGuard to help identify risk privileges in real time. Automated runbooks can terminate accounts that have been hacked, or isolate workloads that are under suspicion.

With threat intelligence integrated with identity checks, Check Point explains how entitlements can either create or eliminate threat pathways in multi-cloud environments.

Features:

1. Threat Correlation: Connects privileged accounts with active threat campaigns or malicious IP traffic.
2. Orchestration & Runbooks: Immediate remediation of compromised roles, e.g., revoking keys.
3. Compliance Packs: Default policies for the HIPAA, PCI DSS, and other compliance standards.
4. Network-Aware Access Controls: Compare entitlements with firewall policies to ensure there is an additional layer of protection.

See user perspectives and reviews about Check Point on PeerSpot.

Critical Factors to Consider When Choosing a CIEM Vendor

To choose the right CIEM vendors, there are more than just feature checklists. The cloud adoption, compliance requirement, and the maturity of the DevOps culture within each organization will determine which of the two solutions will be more effective. Below are six key factors to consider:

1. Cloud Compatibility & Integrations: Make sure that the vendor is compatible with your main providers, such as AWS, Azure, and GCP, and is ready to work with new platforms or expanded ones. The integration with IaC tools and CICD pipelines should be easily visible to work with CIEM products in development and production.
2. Automated Least-Privilege Enforcement: The security of CIEM is defined by the ability to easily, constantly, and selectively strip away unnecessary roles. Find out if the vendor has adaptive policies that are able to decrease entitlements on the fly or based on the current threat intelligence data.
3. Insightful Dashboards & Reporting: Graphical overviews, role-based dashboards, and compliance modules enable DevOps, SecOps, and compliance teams to gain insights that can inform action. Assess the interface and how fast it brings to the user’s attention critical misconfigurations.
4. Threat Detection & AI Analytics: Some CIEM vendors use AI to map identity anomalies to other threat patterns. This integration can speed up the identification of sophisticated attacks such as credential stuffing or lateral movement. If your environment is under threat regularly, then advanced analytics may be needed.
5. Cost & Licensing Model: Pricing can be per seat, per use or even a combination of the two. Learn how the vendor charges for scaling costs by the use of ephemeral resources, in case your environment has dynamic containers or serverless functions.
6. Professional Services & Support: It is challenging to integrate CIEM cloud solutions, especially if you have deep legacy systems or a large DevOps pipeline. Check whether or not the vendor provides migration services, good documentation, and round the clock support to address compliance or security concerns.

Conclusion

While organizations are expanding their cloud deployments, identity, and access management are becoming a clear pain point in security. Over-privileged accounts, misconfigured policies, and ephemeral workloads multiply the risk of unauthorized access, data exfiltration, or compliance breaches. This is where CIEM vendors and their specialized CIEM offerings excel—through automating identity lifecycle management, offering risk intelligence, and consolidating entitlements into a single governance framework.

In 2025, the use of microservices, zero-trust architectures, and continuous delivery will make CIEM a necessity.

When it comes to container-based services, serverless computing, or multi-region expansions, a strong CIEM security approach means that every user, role, and machine identity has only the right level of access and no more. This granular enforcement limits the blast radius in the case of a breach, while simultaneously helping organizations meet compliance requirements while maintaining the speed of DevOps.

Are you ready to strengthen your cloud identity security? Choose one of the nine CIEM vendors such as SentinelOne Singularity Platform to learn how it can fit your cloud environment and compliance needs. Remember to consider factors such as the ability to integrate with other systems, real-time analysis of data, and the level of support provided by the vendor. With CIEM cloud, you will protect your workloads, simplify audits, and prepare for the future of secure cloud operations.

FAQs

1. What is CIEM and why is it important for Cloud Security?

CIEM is an acronym for Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management, which is a focused way of managing user and service identities in the multi-cloud model. It is important because over-privileged or misconfigured entitlements are a major security concern. CIEM vendors offer a real-time monitoring and auto-remediation feature, which means that only the required privileges are active. This capability minimizes the chance that a breach would be amplified due to permissions and is compliant with principles such as zero trust.

2. How do CIEM Vendors help manage Cloud Entitlements and Access?

CIEM products scan cloud environments—AWS, Azure, GCP—for every active role, policy, or service account. They compare actual usage with best practice standards or with machine learning algorithms. If there are over-privileged roles or if there are any abnormal activities, it notifies the administrators or it can also revoke any unnecessary permissions. This dynamic approach ensures that the principle of least privilege is achieved on a real-time basis to avoid the misuse of entitlements by malicious actors or insiders.

3. What industries benefit the most from CIEM Solutions?

Almost any business that is involved in the cloud environment can benefit from CIEM solution adoption. However, sectors that are highly regulated, such as finance, healthcare, and government, reap the most benefits. These industries deal with the confidentiality of information and, therefore, have to adhere to certain compliance requirements.

Through the use of CIEM vendors for data segregation and access control, they are very likely to pass audits, prevent fines, and enhance their brand image. With large DevOps pipelines, tech companies also rely on CIEM in order to ensure that they remain flexible without having to sacrifice security.

4. What are the key Features to look for in a CIEM Platform?

Some of the important features are entitlement discovery, continuous least privilege, and reporting. The tools that can use risk scoring based on AI can identify suspicious behaviors or configurations on their own. This is especially important when working within an existing IAM or DevOps pipeline and built-in compliance modules help with audits. Furthermore, solutions that provide real-time notification and quick response also reduce the workload of the security team.

5. How does CIEM integrate with broader Cloud Security Frameworks?

CIEM security is usually intertwined with other elements such as CSPM, CWPP, and SIEM/SOAR solutions. By integrating identity-related events into these frameworks, CIEM solutions assist in delivering a consolidated threat and vulnerability profile. On the other hand, threat intelligence from CSPM or SIEM may be fed into the CIEM analytics which in turn provides a closed loop of identity threats and active threats correlation for better and more contextualized protection.

6. Can CIEM Solutions prevent Privilege Escalation Attacks?

Yes, most CIEM cloud solutions have the capability to use anomaly detection and pre-set policies to detect any sudden increase in privileges or role changes. They could notice that a service account acquires admin-level permissions to a valuable S3 bucket. These privileges can then be automatically withdrawn before they are misused.

As no technology can provide a foolproof method to prevent advanced attacks, CIEM greatly reduces the chances and the time window in which the attackers can operate.