CloudPassage, a renowned pioneer in cloud computing security and compliance, announced that its offering Halo Cloud Safe is now available in a free, full-featured version. The free version of this Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) service will inventorize the security and enforcement of IaaS users, facilities, and resources and track them continuously.

The Halo free edition lets users automate asset discovery, configuration assessment, inventory, security, and compliance monitoring across Azure, AWS, and GCP accounts.

During 2020, cloud security has become a major industry problem that had worsened more by the increase of remote work.

Industry research shows that about 99% of cloud security issues are the cloud user’s fault, mostly due to misconfiguration. 99% of misconfigurations in the cloud go unreported, exposing companies to data loss and theft. And global data will reach 175 ZB (zettabyte) by 2025, and much of the data will be in cloud-based environments.

“We at CloudPassage believe that cloud security is important enough that every company should be able to protect their assets in the cloud, and cost shouldn’t be a barrier to entry,” said Carson Sweet, Founder and CEO of CloudPassage. “That’s why we’re offering comprehensive CSPM capabilities, expert advice for resolving security issues, and hooks to automate security and compliance for free, forever. No gotchas, pay-walls, or expectations.”

The free version of Halo Cloud Secure holds similar features and capabilities as the Essentials and Enterprise versions. Operated and built on the same award-winning Halo platform, just as Halo’s premium versions, this unified cloud security platform automates security and compliance for containers, servers, and IaaS resources across any public mix hybrid, private, and multi-cloud environments.

Halo’s cloud security posture management (CSPM) free version includes the following features for up to 10 IaaS accounts:

  • Automatic, ongoing, and discovered inventory of resources, services, and other assets
  • Security weaknesses assessment and compliance violations based on industry best practices and standards such as Center for Internet Security (CIS), PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), benchmarks, and SysTrust/SOC 2
  • Automatic and continuous monitoring of security and compliance that includes automatic detection and evaluation of new and changed IaaS resources
  • Fine-grained control of policy rules, API polling frequency, policy assignment, and delivery of issues identified
  • Automation in delivery of issues to cloud owners upon detection via email, message queues, or REST API to enable rapid response to problems
  • Unlimited ad-hoc scans, no fees per scan

The free edition of Halo supports up to 10 accounts for cloud providers through Azure, AWS, and GCP; up to five users; and includes one integration API key. Onboarding and help for self-service are available, with the option of buying onboarding in person. As the Halo free version is developed on the same framework as other Halo versions of CloudPassage, it is seamless to incorporate Halo’s security automation capabilities for servers, containers, and related workloads.