Did you know that cloud security breaches are rarely caused by sophisticated attacks? In reality, they happen because of something much simpler: misconfigurations.
Now, these misconfigurations arise due to the complexity of cloud infrastructures. As your organization moves on from legacy systems and towards the cloud or multi-cloud environment, factors such as human error, inefficient expertise, inadequate governance, and policy management can increase the risk of misconfiguration.
Fortunately, you can tackle these challenges with Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM). CSPM tools basically keep a close eye on your cloud posture and detect and remediate misconfigurations effectively.
So, it is not surprising that the demand for them is at an all-time high.In fact, the market was valued at $1.64 billion in 2023 and is now projected to grow at a remarkable CAGR of 27.8% through 2028.
While many organizations turn to paid CSPM solutions to secure their cloud environments, you can get an equally effective open-source CSPM tool at no cost. So, if optimizing your security posture cost-effectively is your top priority, our list of top 10 CSPM tools will help you.
This list includes all key features and capabilities of the top CSPM tools. We also discuss critical factors to consider when evaluating options so you can gain insights into their flexibility to adapt to your needs and transparency to review the code directly.
But first, let’s answer a simple question.
What is Open-Source CSPM?
Open-source CSPM refers to a suite of freely available tools designed to continuously monitor, assess, and manage the security posture of cloud environments, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS).
The primary function of CSPM is to apply standardized frameworks, regulatory guidelines, and enterprise policies to proactively identify and fix misconfigurations, preventing potential breaches.
The Need for Paid and Open-Source CSPM Tools
As a leader navigating today’s cloud-first world, finding tools to solve security challenges is only one side of the coin. You also need to rethink how security is approached, and CSPM tools form an important part of your security strategy:
1. Manage Multi-Cloud Complexity
If you’re using multiple cloud providers like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, it’s easy for visibility and control to become fragmented. Each platform has its own tools, but managing them cohesively can be a challenge.
CSPM tools give you a unified view of your cloud environments, so you can spot gaps and inconsistencies. They allow you to manage multiple compliance frameworks, like PCI DSS for one cloud and GDPR for another, in one place.
2. Prioritize Cloud-Specific Risks
Not all security risks are created equal, and the cloud introduces unique vulnerabilities like over-permissioned identities, unsecured storage, and shadow IT. CSPM tools specialize in identifying and prioritizing these risks, saving you from wasting time on low-priority issues.
For example, a CSPM tool can help you spot over-permissioned Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles in AWS that could allow attackers to escalate privileges—something generic security tools often overlook.
3. Automate Remediation of Misconfigurations
Finding problems is only half the battle. In the cloud, where environments change rapidly, fixing issues manually isn’t practical. CSPM tools step in by automating fixes, so you can address vulnerabilities quickly.
They can restrict overly permissive firewall rules, encrypt publicly accessible storage buckets, and enforce identity and access management policies automatically. This automation ensures your environment stays secure, even as it evolves.
4. Detect Threats in Real Time
Cloud threats rarely operate in isolation. CSPM tools combine configuration checks with real-time monitoring to help you understand the bigger picture. For example, if a storage bucket is exposed and you’re seeing unusual download activity, a CSPM tool can flag it as an active threat—not just a misconfiguration. This insight lets you act faster.
5. Secure your DevOps Pipelines
If you’re using DevOps practices, you know that many security risks start during the development phase. CSPM tools integrate with your CI/CD pipelines to scan Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) templates for vulnerabilities before deployment and apply security guardrails to prevent risky configurations from going live.
6. Collective Accountability
Whether we like it or not, we’re all interconnected in the digital world. Your organization’s security affects not just your clients but also your partners and even entire industries.
By adopting CSPM tools, you’re joining a broader community where everyone shares insights, learns from each other, and strengthens security together. You contribute to a safer digital ecosystem.
In this scenario, both paid and open-source CSPM have their uses. While open-source tools are cost-effective, transparent, flexible, and have community support, paid tools are easy to use, and come with AI/ML capabilities, 24/7 vendor support, and scalability. If you are working with limited resources and single cloud setups, open-source CSPM is best suited to you.
Open-Source CSPM Landscape for 2025
With numerous open-source CSPM tools available, selecting one that fits the requirements of your organization can be challenging. While cost isn’t a factor here, you should still ensure your chosen open-source CSPM properly safeguards your sensitive data and workloads.
Fret not—we’ve laid the groundwork and identified some of the most effective CSPM tools in the market that can make a difference.
#1 Cloud Custodian
Cloud Custodian is an open-source, stateless rules engine, which means it can process data without storing its state to ensure scalability and speed. With this stateless rule engine, you can define policies as codes, enabling automated governance across multiple cloud platforms, including AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and OpenStack. It can be deployed locally for testing, on virtual machines for centralized management, or in serverless environments like AWS Lambda for scalable operations.
As a CNCF Incubating Project under the Apache 2.0 license, Cloud Custodian focuses on cost optimization, compliance, and automated cloud management, offering flexibility and scalability for diverse use cases.
Features:
- Integrates with Terraform, a popular infrastructure as a code tool, to enforce compliance early in the development life cycle through a “Shift Left” approach.
- Replaces ad-hoc cloud scripts with simple, declarative policies using an intuitive Domain-Specific Language (DSL).
- Supports building complex workflows or simple queries, supplemented by centralized metrics and reporting.
- Automates cost-saving measures, such as powering down resources during non-business hours.
#2 PacBot
Developed by T-Mobile, PacBot, or Policy as Code Bot, is an open-source compliance monitoring tool that enables the definition of compliance policies as code. It continuously evaluates resources and assets to ensure adherence to those policies while providing remediation capabilities.
PacBot’s granular control allows you to focus on specific resources for more targeted compliance. For example, it can group all your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances by state, such as pending, running, or shutting down, and view them collectively for easier management.
Features:
- Applies the auto-fix framework to respond to critical policy violations, such as publicly accessible S3 buckets, by taking predefined remediation actions.
- Grants exceptions to specific cloud resources based on attributes (like tags, types, or configurations).
- Presents violations to asset owners via simple dashboards, making it easier to resolve security gaps quickly.
- Fetches data from internal custom-built solutions, including Bitbucket, Spacewalk, and TrendMicro Deep Security.
#3 Prowler
Prowler is a powerful command-line (CLI) tool designed primarily for AWS security assessments and compliance checks.
It supports a wide range of standards, from the AWS CIS benchmarks to GDPR and HIPAA, making it a versatile option for cloud security hardening. It also offers basic compliance checks for platforms like Azure and Google Cloud.
Features:
- Performs historical data and comparative analyses, helping you track risk reduction and compliance coverage trends over time.
- Scans your entire infrastructure or specific AWS profiles and regions to check security configurations.
- Runs multiple reviews simultaneously and files reports in standard formats such as CSV, JSON, and HTML.
- Easily integrates the output with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems.
#4 ScoutSuite
ScoutSuite is an open-source, point-in-time security auditing platform that collects and runs manual inspections against cloud configurations via APIs. Its USP lies in presenting a clear view of the attack surface in a user-friendly report format, eliminating the need to navigate through multiple pages in web consoles.
Features:
- Enables easy customization and extension of security checks with its flexible YAML configurations.
- Operates effectively with read-only access, minimizing production impact.
- Uses asynchronous API calls to improve scanning speed, especially in large cloud environments with numerous resources.
- Supports popular cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, GCP, Alibaba Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Kubernetes clusters, and DigitalOcean Cloud.
#5 Kube-bench
Kube-bench is an open-source Kubernetes CIS benchmarking tool that verifies whether or not a Kubernetes deployment is secure. Basically, you can run scans inside or outside your environment to gain visibility into security vulnerabilities in your Kubernetes platform.
It also attempts to identify the worker node components and uses that information to determine which tests to use. This comes in handy for safeguarding managed cloud setups.
Features:
- Review your current open ports, proxy boards, and SSL certifications to highlight any exposures once you enter the cluster Domain Name System (DNS) or IP.
- Examines Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) settings to ensure necessary privileges are applied to service accounts, users, and groups.
- Supports installation via the latest binaries(GitHub releases page) or containers for flexible deployment options.
- Analyzes Container Network Interface (CNI) to define network policies for all namespaces.
#6 Open Policy Agent (OPA)
OPA is a unified toolset and framework that defines, tests, and enforces access control, compliance, and security policies across diverse cloud services like Kubernetes, microservices, or CI/CD pipelines—they typically function under different languages, models, and APIs.
Features:
- Integrates natively using a programming language of your choice like Java, C#, Go, Rust, and PHP for policy enforcement.
- Deploys as a daemon, or service, or can be integrated directly into applications via a Go library or WebAssembly.
- Comes with 150+ built-in functions for tasks such as string manipulation, JWT decoding, and data transformations.
- Provides tools like the Rego Playground, VS Code integration, and CLI utilities for policy authoring, testing, and profiling.
#7 Falco
Falco is an open-source security tool that monitors the cloud-native environments at the kernel level, detecting suspicious activity or unexpected changes in real time. It uses Kubernetes to dynamically update its configuration as new pods are added to or removed from the cluster.
Falco’s policy language is straightforward, minimizing complexity and misconfigurations. This means you and your team can understand the policies and alerts regardless of their role or context.
Features:
- Maintains a small resource footprint, using a minimal set of resources, including CPU, memory, and I/O, while monitoring system events
- Uses Extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) technology for improved performance, maintainability, and simplified UX.
- Generates JSON-formatted alerts, which can be sent to SIEM or data lake systems for analysis, storage, or automated response.
- Allows you to create personalized rules to meet specific security requirements.
#8 CloudMapper
CloudMapper is an open-source tool that checks for potential misconfigurations in your AWS environments. Although initially built to produce and display network diagrams in your browser, it has since evolved to contain much more functionality, including visualization and HTML-based reporting.
Features:
- Collects metadata about your AWS accounts for manual inspection and highlights risk areas.
- Identifies users and roles with admin privileges or specific Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies.
- Analyzes geo-location information of Classless Inter-Domain Routings (CIDRs) trusted in Security Groups.
- Detects unused resources such as Elastic IPs, Elastic Load Balancers, network interfaces, and volumes.
#9 KICS
KICS (Keeping Infrastructure as Code Secure) is an open-source solution for static code analysis of Infrastructure as Code (IaC). It includes 2,400+ queries for detecting security issues, all of which are fully customizable and adjustable to fit your specific requirements.
KICS supports a range of platforms and frameworks, including Docker, CloudFormation, Ansible, Helm, Microsoft ARM, and Google Deployment Manager.
Features:
- Shows the results as masked instead of plain text with the corresponding value whenever it finds a secret in the IaC files.
- Performs context-aware scanning by understanding the relationships and dependencies between different configurations.
- Uses a language-agnostic query engine, which means you can write and extend security checks without having to learn a new query language.
- Scans your deployed Kubernetes cluster through provided authentication (e.g., configuration files, certificates, and service account tokens).
How to Choose the Right Open-Source CSPM Tool?
Your choice directly influences how efficiently you can adapt to evolving threats, optimize resource usage, and enforce compliance. At a minimum, the CSPM tool should provide multi-cloud compatibility, ease of configuration, and the ability to scale without performance degradation.
But that’s not all—here are five essential capabilities to prioritize when selecting the right open-source CSPM tool.
1. Drift Detection
Cloud environments are highly dynamic, and configurations can drift from their intended state over time, especially in multi-team settings. Choose a tool that provides real-time or near-real-time monitoring to detect and prevent unintended changes, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities introduced post-deployment.
2. Frequency of Updates
This may seem obvious, but you don’t want to deploy an open-source CSPM tool that lacks regular updates. The success of any open-source tool relies on active development and community support.
Therefore, check GitHub activity such as, issues closed, pull requests, and release frequency, and more forms of engagement on forums. Ensure that the tool has an engaged community and contributors from reputable organizations, signaling its reliability and long-term viability.
3. Self-Hosting Flexibility
If you’re an organization operating in a regulated industry like healthcare or banking, you might be wary of sending sensitive data to third-party managed services, even if they’re open-source. The ability to self-host the CSPM tool can be crucial for data sovereignty.
You should be able to deploy it on-premises and in the cloud, with clear data privacy policies and support for air-gapped environments if needed.
4. Prioritization of Security Alerts
Not all security alerts demand the same level of urgency. Select a tool that uses AI-driven analytics to rank and prioritize alerts based on their potential impact on your environment. This capability reduces alert fatigue, allowing your team to focus on addressing the most critical issues first.
5. Visibility into Network Traffic
Understanding the flow of data within your cloud environment is important to identifying potential threats. Look for a CSPM tool that provides detailed insights into network traffic, including intra-cloud communication and external data flows.
This visibility helps detect anomalous patterns, unauthorized access, or potential data exfiltration attempts, allowing for quicker incident response.
Introducing SentinelOne as a CSPM Solution
SentinelOne Singularity™ Cloud Security is an advanced CNAPP solution that simplifies cloud security posture management (CSPM) across multi-cloud and hybrid environments. It allows organizations to proactively address security risks and misconfigurations by integrating real-time visibility, automated threat detection, and compliance monitoring. The platform’s AI-driven insights identify and remediate vulnerabilities in Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) templates, CI/CD pipelines, and runtime cloud environments.
SentinelOne seamlessly integrates into AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud with a unified dashboard to provide visibility for managing compliance with standards like PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR. Beyond misconfigurations, SentinelOne detects potential attack paths and insider threats, providing complete cloud-native application protection. You can elevate your defenses against sophisticated malware targeting your cloud data and storage. Singularity™ Cloud Data Security offers threat detection for NetApp and simplifies administration. SentinelOne’s agentless CNAPP eliminates zero-days, ransomware, malware, and more. You also get world-class threat intelligence, and hyper-automation can discover unknown cloud deployments. Given the scalable and automated nature of SentinelOne solutions, enterprises can find ways to optimize cloud security strategies with minimal overheads.
Conclusion
Innovation breeds complexity. With increasing data volumes and dispersion across diverse cloud environments, ensuring security with robust CSPM is necessary.
It allows you to maintain visibility and control over your cloud assets without compromising performance or adding complexity, safeguarding your brand reputation at the same time.
While open-source tools provide cost-effective solutions, advanced enterprise options like SentinelOne Singularity CSPM offer additional features, such as AI-driven threat hunting and scalability. For those seeking enhanced protection and comprehensive coverage, exploring such enterprise solutions may be worth considering.
Book a free live demo of SentinelOne Singularity CSPM today to see it in action.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What is Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)?
CSPM is a set of tools, technologies, and practices developed to constantly monitor, manage, and improve the security of your cloud infrastructure. It identifies policy violations and potential vulnerabilities, such as exposed storage buckets, insecure access controls, and unpatched services, ensuring your cloud assets remain compliant with industry standards and organizational policies.
2. Why use open-source CSPM tools?
Open-source CSPM tools provide flexibility, transparency, and cost-efficiency. You can customize them as per your business requirements without vendor lock-in.
Since active communities frequently update them, you benefit from rapid improvements and shared best practices. Plus, CSPM tools often offer a level of visibility and control that closed-source or proprietary solutions might lack.
3. Can open-source CSPM tools be used across different cloud providers?
Many open-source CSPM tools support multi-cloud environments, enabling you to manage security across AWS, Azure, GCP, and others from a single pane of glass. This is useful if you have a hybrid or multi-cloud setup and want uniformity in security standards with minimal operational overhead.
4. Are open-source CSPM tools suitable for small businesses?
Absolutely! Open-source CSPM tools are a cost-effective choice for small businesses wanting to improve cloud security without the burden of hefty licensing fees. You can start small and scale up as your needs grow. Plus, with a public documentation hub, you get up to speed quickly, reducing the learning curve significantly.
5. Can open-source CSPM tools integrate with other security tools?
Yes, that’s one of their biggest advantages. They can feed scan results into existing SIEM systems, enabling centralized analysis and incident response. With APIs, plugins, and flexible output formats, open-source CSPM tools can easily integrate with your current tech stack.
6. Are open-source CSPM tools effective for large organizations?
Yes, they can be highly effective if managed well. Open-source CSPM tools can scale to handle complex, large environments. They give you granular control, enabling custom policies and automated remediations at scale. However, some technical know-how is required to configure and maintain them, so please ensure you have the right team who can use CSPM tools.
7. How often should I run CSPM scans?
The frequency of CSPM scans depends on your cloud environment’s change rate and risk profile. For example, dynamic environments with frequent updates demand continuous monitoring or automated daily scans to detect real-time issues.
On the other hand, bi-weekly or monthly scans might be sufficient for more stable environments, provided they’re coupled with robust alerting systems for high-impact changes.
8. What skills are needed to use open-source CSPM tools effectively?
You’ll need team members who have a solid understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), coding skills (Python, YAML, or Rego for policy writing), and experience with IaC (Terraform or CloudFormation). Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices will also help them smoothly integrate CSPM tools into the workflows.