Organizations are struggling with multicloud complexity that traditional security tools cannot adequately address.
The cloud security posture management (CSPM) market is experiencing explosive growth, as organizations grapple with increasingly complex multicloud environments, according to a report from Frost & Sullivan.
The fundamental challenge driving CSPM adoption stems from the sheer complexity of modern cloud infrastructures. Organizations are deploying services across multiple cloud providers and, as a result, struggle to maintain consistent security policies and configurations. This complexity creates blind spots where misconfigurations (a primary cause of cloud breaches) can easily go unnoticed among numerous services and settings.
While many security products provide sophisticated security threat visualizations, they also often generate a constant flood of alerts. Security staff have trouble differentiating between those that require immediate attention and those that are less pressing, or even benign.
As a result of the demands and complexity of multicloud environments, modern CSPM requirements have evolved far beyond simple vulnerability scanning and compliance checking. Organizations now demand real-time threat detection, automated remediation capabilities, and integration with DevOps workflows. The focus has shifted toward comprehensive risk management that includes attack path analysis, runtime visibility, and identity-centric security controls.
Advanced capabilities now include continuous asset discovery, dynamic configuration monitoring, and intelligent risk prioritization using AI and machine learning technologies. Organizations particularly value solutions that can trace misconfigurations back to their sources in infrastructure-as-code files, enabling preventive rather than reactive security measures.
Despite strong market growth, however, several factors are constraining broader CSPM adoption. A critical skills shortage hampers the organization’s ability to effectively implement and manage these solutions, especially since developers often lack adequate security expertise. The friction between security teams and developers remains a significant barrier, with security often perceived as slowing modern DevOps-style development.
When new solutions are deployed faster than security teams can take measures to ensure they are secure, breaches typically don’t get blamed on the speed of deployment. Economic pressures force enterprises to rapidly innovate to remain competitive. The solution cannot be to slow development.
Instead, enterprises must optimize resource allocation, pushing toward risk-based security approaches that prioritize investments offering the greatest risk reduction. This “do more with less” mentality is driving demand for consolidated platforms that can replace multiple point solutions.
The market is projected to maintain robust growth with a 27.8% compound annual growth rate through 2028, driven by accelerated cloud adoption and increasingly stringent compliance requirements. The integration of CSPM into broader cloud-native application protection platforms demonstrates the industry’s evolution toward comprehensive, unified security approaches.
Organizations seeking CSPM solutions must balance technical capabilities with practical considerations including scalability, ease of use, and return on investment. Success increasingly depends on selecting platforms that can adapt to rapid cloud evolution while maintaining consistent policy enforcement across diverse infrastructure types to properly manage both the opportunities and risks of this transformative technology.
Palo Alto Networks is on a strong growth trajectory to solidify its position as a
prominent player in the industry, with 13.1% of the market share, and has established itself as a trailblazer in the CSPM industry with its Cortex Cloud™ platform. Developed specifically to address the security concerns of complex cloud environments, Cortex Cloud provides a CSPM platform that simultaneously simplifies and strengthens enterprises’ security posture.
Download the full report for a deeper dive into these issues and strategies for solving them.
