Policy Based Access Management (PBAM) and Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) - NextLabs

Modern enterprises face two tightly linked access-control problems: cloud entitlement sprawl (too many, poorly understood, often inherited permissions) and the need for dynamic, context-aware authorization decisions at runtime. Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) addresses the structural risk side by discovering identities and effective permissions across cloud and hybrid environments, identifying excessive/unused/inherited access (including for Non-Human Identities), and supporting continuous right-sizing, least privilege, and compliance evidence. Policy-Based Access Management (PBAM) addresses the runtime decision side by externalizing authorization from applications into centralized policy engines that evaluate requests in real time using contextual attributes and risk signals, enabling least privilege, just-in-time access, and Zero Trust-aligned continuous verification. The document outlines PBAM adoption challenges—fragmented legacy entitlement models, policy sprawl and inconsistency, limited ability to ingest/normalize real-time signals, runtime enforcement latency and scaling constraints, legacy application incompatibility, and immature governance/lifecycle processes—then describes PBAM architecture (PDP/PEP/PIP, policy languages like Rego/XACML), governance tooling (versioning, simulation, impact analysis, auditing), and modern deployment patterns (OPA sidecars/daemons, microservices/service mesh enforcement). It similarly details CIEM challenges—limited visibility into effective entitlements, accumulated privilege, hybrid/multi-cloud fragmentation, NHI governance gaps, and compliance pressures—and CIEM solution capabilities (continuous discovery, entitlement analytics, dynamic adjustments, role rationalization, JIT access, multi-cloud normalization, continuous compliance reporting). NextLabs is presented as a leader in both domains, positioning CloudAz as a unified, attribute-driven authorization and entitlement governance platform with federated authorization, distributed yet centrally governed enforcement, a Meta Attribute Store to aggregate/normalize attributes, broad integrations, real-time ABAC decisioning, strong policy lifecycle governance, and centralized audit/telemetry export (e.g., to SIEM). The core thesis is that unifying CIEM (entitlement hygiene and governance) with PBAM (contextual runtime enforcement) closes the gap between identifying risky access and preventing misuse across heterogeneous cloud, hybrid, data, and application environments.

• NextLabs was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in California, USA (also referenced as San Mateo, California).
• The company has been awarded more than 100 patents, with about 30 pending.
• CloudAz is identified as the core platform of NextLabs’ offering, functioning as a unified policy management suite with real-time enforcement and policy orchestration.
• CloudAz supports federated authorization, described as distributed enforcement with centralized governance.
• The platform includes a Meta Attribute Store that aggregates, normalizes, and manages attributes from multiple authoritative systems.
• NextLabs supports SAML and OAuth2 for interoperability with identity providers.
• NextLabs provides PEPs for API gateways, REST/HTTP application proxies, REST APIs, and offers SDKs to build custom PEPs.
• The solution includes data access enforcers that intercept SQL queries to apply filtering and masking based on policies.
• Major cloud providers explicitly cited as supported include AWS, Azure, and GCP.
• NextLabs was described as one of only two vendors recognized as an Overall Leader in both PBAM and CIEM reports, and as the highest rated among them.

• “PBAM governs how access decisions are made by externalizing authorization logic into centralized policy engines that evaluate requests in real time.”
• “CIEM governs what access exists by delivering visibility into effective permissions and continuously adjusting privileges across cloud and hybrid infrastructures.”
• “Signal poverty undermines policy effectiveness.”
• “Organizations that fail to build a cohesive policy management framework risk replacing static complexity with dynamic disorder.”
• “PBAM enables time-bound, condition-based access through JIT mechanisms or ephemeral entitlements.”
• “This reduces the risks introduced by manual entitlements and provides a clear chain of responsibility.”
• “Instead of point-in-time reviews, auditors gain visibility into continuous access governance activities.”
• “This distinguishes real CIEM from role-visibility tooling.”
• “The premise is that entitlement risk is not only about who has permissions, but about whether the permission should be exercised in a specific context.”
• “This architectural consistency ensures that governance is directly coupled to operational control.”