PSPM Definition
Preventive Security Posture Management (PSPM) is a category of security tools that continuously manage cloud misconfiguration risk through visibility, simulation, and enforcement of preventive controls across the deployment lifecycle, from build to runtime.
PSPM platforms provide five core capabilities:
- Unified visibility into preventive controls across all four prevention layers (Build, Access, Config, Runtime) and all cloud accounts
- Gap analysis connecting prevention coverage to detection findings, identifying which alerts could be eliminated through prevention
- Impact simulation testing controls against historical cloud activity before enforcement, predicting what would be blocked
- Safe deployment orchestrating gradual rollout with monitoring modes, phased enforcement, and systematic exception management
- Prevention metrics quantifying coverage, effectiveness, and ROI across the organization
Together, these capabilities enable organizations to execute the five prevention practices (Discover, Analyze, Simulate, Deploy, Measure) at scale across complex multi-cloud environments.
PSPM vs. Prevention-First Security
Prevention-first security is the philosophy and framework. It answers "why prevent?" (the six benefits), "what do we prevent?" (the four layers of controls), and "how do we prevent?" (the five practices).
PSPM is how organizations operationalize prevention-first security at scale. It's the platform category that makes the five practices achievable across hundreds of accounts, multiple clouds, and distributed teams. PSPM turns prevention-first from philosophy into systematic execution.
Think of it this way:
- Prevention-first = The framework and methodology
- PSPM = The platform and tooling that enables it at scale
Organizations can practice prevention-first security without PSPM platforms (through manual processes and scattered tools), but PSPM platforms make prevention systematic, measurable, and scalable.