What is Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is a core feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud. CSPM provides continuous visibility into the security state of your cloud assets and workloads, offering actionable guidance to improve your security posture across Azure.

Defender for Cloud continually assesses your cloud infrastructure against security standards defined for your Azure subscriptions projects. Defender for Cloud issues security recommendations to help you identify and reduce cloud misconfigurations and security risks.

By default, when you enable Defender for Cloud on an Azure subscription, the Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark (MCSB) standard is enabled and provides recommendations to secure your environment. The secure score based on some of the MCSB recommendations helps you monitor cloud compliance. A higher score indicates a lower identified risk level.

CSPM Plans

Defender for Cloud provides the following CSPM offerings currently:

• Foundational CSPM (free): Enabled by default for all onboarded subscriptions and accounts.

Plan availability

Defender CSPM is available across multiple deployment models:

• Multi-cloud: Support for Azure environment
• Hybrid: On-premises resources through Azure Arc

For specific regional availability and government cloud support details, see the support matrix for cloud environments.

Feature	Foundational CSPM	Defender CSPM	Cloud availability
Asset inventory			Azure, on-premises, Docker Hub, JFrog Artifactory
Data exporting			Azure, on-premises
Data visualization and reporting with Azure Workbooks			Azure, on-premises
Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark			Azure
Secure score			Azure, on-premises, Docker Hub, JFrog Artifactory
Security recommendations			Azure, on-premises
Tools for remediation			Azure, on-premises
Workflow automation			Azure, on-premises
Agentless code-to-cloud containers vulnerability assessment	-		Azure, Docker Hub, JFrog Artifactory
Custom Recommendations	-		Azure
Internet exposure analysis	-		Azure, Docker Hub, JFrog Artifactory
Regulatory compliance assessments	-		Azure, Docker Hub, JFrog Artifactory

Plan Pricing

• See Defender for Cloud pricing and use the cost calculator to estimate costs.

Azure Cloud Support

For commercial and national cloud coverage, see Azure cloud environment support matrix.

Next Steps

• Learn about security standards and recommendations
• Learn about secure score