Cloud Security Solutions: 8 Categories and 8 Tools to Know in 2026

What Are Cloud Security Tools?

Cloud security tools are software solutions designed to protect cloud-based data, applications, and infrastructure. These tools address various security concerns, including data privacy, unauthorized access, and vulnerabilities within cloud services. They help organizations maintain compliance, prevent threats, and ensure the integrity of their cloud environments.

Cloud security tools can fall into several categories:

1. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM): CSPM tools continuously monitor and assess cloud security configurations, identify misconfigurations, and help organizations improve their overall security posture.
2. Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB): CASB tools are physical or software-based gateways that allow organizations to apply consistent access policies across on-premises and cloud environments. 
3. Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP): CWPP tools help protect cloud workloads like virtual machines, containers, and serverless functions by discovering them and applying security policies.
4. Cloud compliance: Cloud compliance tools help organizations understand how to align their cloud environments with compliance requirements. 
5. Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM): SIEM tools ingest alert and data and analyze security-related behavior to help detect, investigate, and mitigate attacks.
6. eXtended Detection and Response (XDR): XDR tools help organizations implement threat detection and incident response across the layers of a cloud environment. 
7. Secure Access Service Edge (SASE): SASE tools provide remote access to cloud systems with live context, compliance, and security policies based on device identities. 
8. Security Service Edge (SSE): SSE tools help secure access to cloud services and applications by ensuring access control, threat protection, monitoring, and data security.

Key functions of cloud security tools include:

• Identity and access management (IAM): Ensures only authorized users can access cloud resources, often through features like single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and role-based access control (RBAC). 
• Data encryption: Protects sensitive data at rest (when stored) and in transit (when being transmitted) by converting it into an unreadable format. 
• Threat Detection and Response: Monitors for suspicious activity and malicious attacks, alerting administrators and often providing automated or manual mitigation.
• Web application firewalls (WAFs): Protect web applications hosted in the cloud from common attacks like SQL injection and DDoS. 
• Endpoint protection: Secures devices accessing cloud resources, detecting and responding to malware and other threats. 
• Data loss prevention (DLP): Prevents the unauthorized sharing or transfer of sensitive data.

Data privacy and security concerns continue to grow as more and more businesses adopt cloud infrastructure, and use cloud resources to store sensitive data and run mission-critical applications.

With so many security threats facing cloud environments, businesses need to automatically detect security incidents and proactively identify threats across their environment. Cloud security is an evolving challenge that can only be addressed if cloud technologies and security tools work together.

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What Do You Need to Secure in the Cloud?

Cloud environments are complex and built of a large number of moving parts. Many organizations use SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) to govern security for their SaaS cloud services, enabling their DevOps, Security and IT teams to get visibility and manage the security posture of their SaaS environments — particularly to evaluate their zero trust initiatives and toolsets. Here are the main types of assets that must be addressed by cloud security solutions:

Cloud networks

Firewalls are as important in the cloud as they are on-premises, but they involve a few different requirements. A cloud firewall must be deployed in such a way that it does not disrupt essential connections within a virtual private cloud (VPC) or within the broader cloud network. Firewalls and other technologies can be used to inspect and filter network traffic to and from cloud resources (ingress/egress traffic) — whether web access in front of an application or general traffic regulation.

Compute instances

Also known as virtual machines (VMs), these are computing resources that run cloud workloads. A compute instance must be protected against vulnerabilities, malware, and uncontrolled changes, like any server. Protection can be more complex because cloud instances are started and stopped dynamically. They must remain visible to IT administrators and each instance must be governed by a security policy.

Containers 

A common deployment pattern in the cloud is to run applications in containers: lightweight processes that can contain an entire software environment. Containers are used to run software reliably in any environment. 

Containers are based on images, and security solutions must provide a way to scan container images for vulnerabilities or unauthorized changes before and as they are used. In addition, there is a need for monitoring and protection of containers during runtime, and additional security layers for container orchestrators, like Kubernetes. 

Cloud applications

Cloud applications, whether deployed on cloud instances, containers, or serverless platforms, require their own security measures. This includes securing application configuration, ensuring strong authentication, and monitoring application traffic for malicious or abnormal patterns. Both their logs and their authentication methodologies should be secure. IT administrators and security teams must have central visibility and control over cloud applications, to enable threat detection and response.

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How Are Cloud Security Solutions Impacted by Governance and Compliance?

A cloud security solution should support the standards and regulations affecting your organization, and assist with compliance. 

Regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and standards like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), have extensive implications for cloud environments. Ideally, a cloud security solution should help organizations:

• Identify elements in the environment that may violate a compliance requirement
• Remediate compliance issues
• Collect relevant data from the environment such as access and change logs
• Generate reports demonstrating compliance to auditors

Key Functions of Cloud Security Tools

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

IAM tools ensure secure user authentication and authorization by enforcing policies such as least privilege and role-based access. They help manage identities across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, providing visibility into who is accessing what and under which conditions.

Data Encryption

Encryption tools secure sensitive data by converting it into unreadable formats for unauthorized users. These tools often support both symmetric and asymmetric encryption and are essential for protecting data during storage, transmission, and processing.

Threat Detection and Response

These tools monitor logs, network traffic, and system behavior to identify potential threats in real-time. They often leverage machine learning or rule-based analysis to detect anomalies and can trigger automated responses to contain or mitigate threats.

Web Application Firewalls (WAFs)

WAFs filter and monitor HTTP traffic between applications and the internet. They block malicious traffic such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other OWASP Top 10 threats, helping to secure cloud-hosted web applications.

Endpoint Protection

Endpoint protection tools defend user devices that access cloud environments. They provide antivirus, anti-malware, and behavioral analysis features to detect and stop threats at the device level before they can impact cloud resources.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

DLP solutions monitor data transfers and apply controls to prevent sensitive data from leaving the organization. They classify data, detect policy violations, and enforce rules to block unauthorized sharing or exfiltration of critical information.

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8 Cloud Security Solution Categories

The following are the most commonly used SSPM solution categories used to help organizations secure cloud computing environments:

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

CSPM tools scan cloud configurations to identify insecure configurations or those that deviate from security standards or compliance requirements. Security misconfiguration is one of the top causes of security breaches in the cloud. CSPM can identify misconfigurations and automatically remediate vulnerabilities in affected systems. It can also report on cloud configurations for compliance purposes.

Related content: Read our explainer on Cloud Security Posture Management.

Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)

CASB tools act as a gateway between users and cloud services. They can be deployed as a physical device or a software application, either in the cloud or on-premises. CASB extends security policies beyond the on-premises environment, allowing organizations to apply the same access policies both on-premises and in the cloud. 

CASB solutions work by auto-discovering cloud services used by the organization, determining the risk associated with each service, and setting and enforcing policies for data use and user access. CASB solutions typically also perform data encryption and malware protection.

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

CSPM tools scan cloud configurations to identify insecure configurations or those that deviate from security standards or compliance requirements. Security misconfiguration is one of the top causes of security breaches in the cloud. CSPM can identify misconfigurations and automatically remediate vulnerabilities in affected systems. It can also report on cloud configurations for compliance purposes.

Related content: Read our explainer on Cloud Security Posture Management.

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)

CWPP tools protect cloud workloads, such as virtual machines, containers, and serverless functions. They can discover workloads running in multiple cloud environments and apply consistent security policies to all workloads. CWPP typically collects information directly from operating systems rather than integrating with cloud provider APIs.

Cloud Compliance

Cloud compliance solutions improve visibility over cloud workloads. They help organizations understand what parts of a cloud environment violate compliance requirements. A cloud compliance tool can generate audits showing whether cloud systems comply with specific regulations and standards, and suggest remediation for compliance issues.

Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM)

A modern SIEM solution is uniquely capable of ingesting and behaviorally analyzing all security alert data from any cloud or on-premises data source to help organizations detect, investigate, and respond to cyberattacks more efficiently.

To effectively function as a cloud cyber-cop, the modern SIEM needs multiple API-based connectors to enable the ingestion of alert data from any source you need to ensure cloud security. It also may ingest on-premises data sources into a hybrid multicloud environment. Generally the same as protecting on-premises infrastructure, the process looks like this: 

• Logs are ingested and centralized into a SIEM
• An alert fires either from a security tool or from a correlation rule in the SIEM, or a notable user or entity event is created from behavioral analytics
• This triggers an investigation, where analysts review evidence gathered in their SIEM
• Evidence is processed into an incident timeline
• Based on the timeline, the analyst can now respond to an attack

The analyst now knows what systems and users were involved, can view their activities, and consult with or apply playbooks for remediation.

eXtended Detection and Response (XDR)

XDR is a new security paradigm that allows organizations to more effectively deliver threat detection and incident response (TDIR). Cloud environments have multiple layers, including public networks, virtual private networks (VPN), APIs, workloads, and applications. Another dimension is unprotected user devices connecting to cloud services. 

XDR can help by combining three types of data to the TDIR regime, and automatically constructing attack timelines that can help rapidly investigate incidents:

• Identity management – monitoring human users and service roles for anomalous activity
• Cloud logs – collecting large volumes of log data from multiple layers of the cloud environment and extracting anomalous events
• Analyzing network flows – going beyond monitoring NetFlow for cloud machines by observing network traffic across entire cloud environments, and automatically responding by configuring network segmentation

XDR shines in its ability to combine data from cloud environments with data from on-premises systems and other distributed systems, such as IoT.

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

SASE enables remote access to cloud systems with real-time context, security, and compliance policies, based on the identity of a device or entity.

SASE provides a variety of integrated network and security features, such as SD-WAN and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). It also supports general Internet security for branch offices, remote workers, and locals.

SASE greatly simplifies the delivery and operation of critical network services through a cloud delivery model, improving agility, resilience, and security. Its biggest advantage is that it is a fully-integrated solution, whereas the previous generation of remote access solutions required the integration of four to six different tools in order to provide a fully secure solution.

Security Service Edge (SSE)

SSE secures access to the web, cloud services, and personal applications. Features include access control, threat protection, data security, security monitoring, and acceptable usage control, all implemented through web-based and API-based integrations.

SSE technology enables organizations to implement security policies and support their employees anytime, anywhere using a cloud-centric approach. By consolidating multiple security features into a single product, it provides an immediate opportunity to reduce complexity and improve the user experience.

Notable Cloud Security Tools and Solutions

1. Exabeam

Exabeam New-Scale Fusion is a cloud-native security operations platform that combines SIEM, log management, and behavioral analytics. Built to unify threat detection, investigation, and response (TDIR), it monitors both human activity and machine activity to secure enterprise environments against credential misuse, insider threats, and compromised accounts.

Key features include:

• Behavioral analytics and risk scoring: Establishes behavioral baselines for human and non-human entities, applying dynamic risk scoring to flag anomalies that bypass static correlation rules.
• Agent Behavior Analytics: Extends continuous behavioral monitoring and anomaly detection to AI agents and other non-human identities.
• Cloud-native SIEM and log management: Ingests, parses, and enriches security telemetry at scale, using a Common Information Model to ensure data is normalized and immediately searchable.
• Standards-based automation: Accelerates incident response workflows with low-code automation and prebuilt playbooks that integrate with external tools and security infrastructure.
• AI-driven investigation: Employs Exabeam Nova agents to analyze security alerts, simplify triage workflows, and automatically generate case summaries.
• Outcomes-focused coverage: Utilizes the Exabeam Nova Advisor Agent to map detection coverage directly to the MITRE ATT&CK framework and recommend posture improvements (see image below of Outcomes Navigator).

Source: Exabeam

2. Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a cloud-native security platform that protects applications from development through deployment and into runtime. Built as a unified “code to cloud” platform, it secures the application lifecycle by integrating with development pipelines, monitoring infrastructure, and providing threat protection. 

Key features include:

• Code security: Identifies and remediates vulnerabilities early in development with tools like infrastructure-as-code (IaC) scanning, secrets detection, CI/CD pipeline security, and software composition analysis (SCA).
• Infrastructure protection: Monitors and hardens cloud infrastructure using cloud security posture management (CSPM), API visibility, cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM), and agentless workload scanning.
• Runtime defense: Provides in-line protection for workloads, containers, serverless environments, and APIs.
• Threat detection: Uses AI to detect new attacks and analyze cloud events to uncover security risks.
• AI SPM (AI Security Posture Management): Secures AI-powered applications by monitoring model integrity, data usage, and access to deployed models.

Source: Palo Alto Networks

3. SentinelOne Singularity Cloud

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud is a cloud workload security solution to protect virtual machines, containers, and Kubernetes environments. As part of the Singularity Platform, it combines runtime protection, behavioral detection, and autonomous response to deliver visibility and control over cloud-native workloads. 

Key features include:

• Runtime protection for cloud workloads: Continuously monitors runtime behavior of VMs, containers, and Kubernetes clusters to detect and block malicious actions using behavioral AI models.
• Autonomous detection and response: Automatically identifies indicators of compromise and remediates threats without manual intervention.
• Agent-based workload security: Uses lightweight agents to provide visibility into workload activity.
• Cloud-native threat intelligence: Integrates threat intelligence into detection workflows to stay ahead of evolving threats targeting cloud workloads.
• Kubernetes and container protection: Secures containerized workloads and orchestrators with runtime visibility, drift prevention, and behavioral analytics for Kubernetes environments.

Source: SentinelOne 

4. Qualys Cloud Platform

Qualys Cloud Platform is a cloud security and compliance solution that gives organizations visibility into their cloud assets and vulnerabilities. It continuously monitors workloads, configurations, and vulnerabilities across major cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle. It automates detection, prioritization, and remediation of security issues and compliance risks.

Key features include:

• Asset visibility: Continuously discovers and classifies cloud assets, including instances, workloads, and services.
• Cloud inventory and security assessment: Qualys Cloud Inventory creates a full inventory of cloud workloads and infrastructure, while Cloud Security Assessment identifies misconfigurations and non-standard deployments across accounts and services.
• Vulnerability Management and Threat Prioritization: tracks vulnerabilities across cloud assets and uses threat intelligence to prioritize remediation based on risk impact.
• Policy compliance automation: Assesses and monitors cloud assets for compliance with internal policies and external regulations.
• Web application security: Scans web applications for vulnerabilities and integrates with a web application firewall (WAF) to block attacks and virtually patch issues.

Source: Qualys 

5. Checkpoint CloudGuard

Check Point CloudGuard is a prevention-focused cloud security platform that delivers protection across applications, workloads, code, and network infrastructure. Intended to secure multicloud and hybrid environments, it integrates seamlessly with leading cloud providers and DevOps pipelines to block threats, detect misconfigurations, and prioritize risk across the application lifecycle. 

Key features include:

• CNAPP:  Secures applications from development to deployment by identifying misconfigurations, enforcing security best practices, and preventing threats across workloads, containers, and cloud services.
• AI-based web application and API protection: Uses contextual AI to provide signature-less protection against known and zero-day attacks on web applications and APIs.
• Cloud network security: Implements cloud-native security gateways that offer threat prevention, traffic inspection, and unified policy enforcement across public, private, and hybrid cloud networks.
• Cloud detection and response: Delivers cloud visibility with threat intelligence, intrusion detection, network traffic analysis, and automated response capabilities.
• Code security: Scans infrastructure-as-code and source repositories to detect exposed credentials, insecure configurations, and risks in development workflows.

Source: Check Point 

6. Orca Security

Orca Security is a cloud security platform that provides risk visibility and protection across multi-cloud environments without the operational burden of deploying agents. Designed to simplify cloud security, it delivers full-stack coverage from vulnerabilities and misconfigurations to identity risks, data exposure, and runtime threats.

Key features include:

• Agentless visibility: Connects to cloud environments via API to scan and analyze assets.
• Unified risk context: Correlates data across vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, identities, APIs, and data to deliver a prioritized view of the most critical risks.
• Prioritized risk graphs and attack paths: Uses contextual analysis to map potential attack paths and identify high-risk combinations that represent real threats.
• Vulnerability and workload protection: Detects software vulnerabilities, malware, and misconfigurations across VMs, containers, and serverless workloads.
• Cloud Compliance and governance: Continuously assesses compliance posture against frameworks like CIS, GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS.

Source: Orca Security 

7. Lacework FortiCNAPP

Lacework FortiCNAPP is a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) to secure cloud environments from code to runtime. Built through the integration of Lacework’s behavioral analytics and Fortinet’s security capabilities, it consolidates cloud security functions into a single, AI-driven platform. 

Key features include:

• Unified CNAPP platform: Combines CSPM, KSPM, CIEM, CWPP, SAST, SCA, IaC security, and cloud detection and response into one platform.
• Context-aware risk prioritization: Visualizes relationships between risks, entities, and attack paths to assess exploitability and potential impact.
• Zero-day threat detection: Uses machine learning to detect unknown and early-stage threats like credential compromise, ransomware, and cryptojacking, without relying on static rules or signatures.
• Cloud identity management (CIEM): Continuously maps all users, groups, and roles across cloud environments, calculates net-effective permissions, and flags overprivileged identities for remediation.
• Cloud compliance automation: Continuously maps assets and configurations to standards such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, and ISO 27001.

Source: Fortinet

8. CrowdStrike Falcon

CrowdStrike Falcon^® Cloud Security is a unified cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) to prevent breaches across the cloud lifecycle from code to runtime. Built on CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform, it combines agent-based and agentless protection in one console, helping protect workloads, containers, applications, and AI models. 

Key features include:

• Agent and agentless protection: Combines agent-based runtime protection and agentless scanning for visibility and defense across multi-cloud environments.
• Code-to-cloud coverage: Secures the full application lifecycle, including infrastructure (CSPM), software (ASPM), data (DSPM), and AI models (AI-SPM).
• Runtime security: Built on the Falcon sensor, provides visibility and defense for workloads, containers, and Kubernetes.
• Cloud detection and response (CDR): Accelerates incident response by using real-time telemetry, behavior analytics, and managed services.
• Adversary-focused threat intelligence: Tracks over 250 adversaries.

Source: CrowdStrike 

How to Choose Cloud Security Software

Here are important things to consider when selecting a cloud security solution for your organization:

Public cloud support

• Does the solution support multiple public cloud providers?
• Does it allow you to manage multiple accounts on each cloud provider?
• Do you have granular access control for different features of the solution?

Compliance and policies

• Does the solution support compliance standards like CIS security benchmarks, NIST cloud security guidelines, and PCI DSS? 
• Does the solution enable custom security policies?

Threat detection

• Does the tool detect security vulnerabilities in real-time, and what type of notifications does it provide?
• How does the solution visualize security vulnerabilities, and what actionable information does it provide that can enable rapid response?
• Can the solution perform automated remediation or threat response, and to what extent?

Data handling

• What volume of data can the solution store and what is the retention period?
• Can the solution identify relationships between cloud objects, services, and user accounts?
• Can the solution operate without write permissions? 

Developer support

• Can the solution trace security issues to specific changes made by developers?
• What third-party integrations are supported? Can the solution work with existing security tools?
• Does the solution provide APIs and supporting documentation?

Ease of use

• Is the solution easy to use, and what level of training, documentation, and support is available?
• How often is the solution updated and do updates require any action from your organization? 

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Exabeam: Enhancing Threat Detection with Advanced Security Analytics

The Exabeam Security Operations Platform delivers a powerful combination of SIEM, behavioral analytics, automation, and network visibility to transform how organizations detect, investigate, and respond to threats. By correlating firewall logs with data from endpoints, cloud environments, identity systems, and other security sources, Exabeam provides deeper insights into evolving threats that would otherwise go undetected.

Behavior-driven analytics enable Exabeam to go beyond static rules and signatures, identifying anomalous activity that indicates credential misuse, insider threats, or lateral movement across the network. By analyzing normal user and entity behavior over time, Exabeam surfaces high-risk activities that traditional security tools may overlook.

Automated investigations streamline security operations by linking disparate data points into comprehensive threat timelines, reducing the time analysts spend piecing together incidents manually. This allows teams to quickly identify the root cause of an attack and respond with precision.

Learn more about Exabeam SIEM