# What are CSPM, CASB and SSPM, and do we need them?

They are three kinds of cloud security tools that look at different things. Cloud security posture management (CSPM) checks the configuration of your cloud accounts, such as public storage, open firewall rules, missing encryption or overly broad permissions, against best practice and reports drift. SaaS security posture management (SSPM) does the same for SaaS applications, checking settings like MFA enforcement, external sharing and admin roles. A cloud access security broker (CASB) sits between users and cloud services, through a proxy or the providers' APIs, to discover which services are used and to enforce policies such as blocking uploads of sensitive data. Whether you need them depends on scale. A company with one cloud account and one office suite can often get far with the providers' own built-in recommendations and secure-score dashboards, which cost nothing extra. Several cloud accounts, many SaaS tools or regulated data make dedicated tools more worthwhile. None of them watches the behaviour of devices on your network; that is a different layer, which network detection covers.

FAQ: [Cloud and SaaS security](https://netsenx.com/en/faq/cloud) · https://netsenx.com/en/faq/what-are-cspm-casb-and-sspm

## Read next

- https://netsenx.com/en/what-is-ndr
- https://netsenx.com/en/detect-lateral-movement-c2-beaconing
- https://netsenx.com/en/eu-data-residency

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