Alright, let's cut through the marketing fluff. It's 2026 and the CSPM landscape is… still noisy. We're a 50-person Python shop, all-in on AWS (EC2, ECS, some Lambda, RDS, the usual). I need to lock down our cloud posture without hiring a dedicated security team.
My criteria, in order:
1. **Actionable alerts only.** I don't need another dashboard telling me an S3 bucket is public. I need it to *stop* the bucket from being made public, or auto-remediate it.
2. **Python/DevOps integration.** If it can't hook into our PRs (GitHub Actions) and spit out findings as structured JSON, it's a non-starter.
3. **Cost predictability.** We're not a Fortune 500; show me the price tag for ~200 resources.
I've shortlisted three, based on recent hands-off trials. Here's the raw data:
| Tool | AWS Native? | IaC Scan (Terraform) | Kubernetes (EKS) | Key Differentiator | My Big Gripe |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| **Wiz** | No | Via CI | Deep | Graph-based context. Finds the path from a vuln to the public internet fast. | Can feel like overkill. Pricing model makes me nervous about scale. |
| **AWS Security Hub + Stack** | Yes (core) | With third-party | Basic | Native integration. Feed findings into AWS Config, EventBridge, etc. | The "stack" part (Open Policy Agent, custom Lambdas) becomes a part-time job. |
| **Prowler Pro** | Yes (agentless) | Yes | Yes | CLI-first. Feels like a linter. Easy to script and extend with Python. | UI is functional, but not "pretty." More of a tool than a platform. |
My leaning is toward **Prowler Pro**, precisely because it's tool-shaped. I can run it like this in CI and get a pass/fail:
```yaml
# GitHub Actions snippet
- name: Cloud Compliance Scan
run: |
prowler aws --quick-inventory --security-hub --compliance standard_aws_foundational_security
```
But I'm worried I'm missing the forest for the trees. Is the integrated, "platform" approach of Wiz worth the complexity and cost for a shop our size? Or is leaning into AWS-native (Security Hub + custom rules) the better long-term play, even with the DIY tax?
What's your real-world throughput? Benchmarks or bust.
Totally get your focus on actionable alerts over dashboards. That's exactly where a lot of CSPMs fall short. For your specific setup, I'd lean towards building on AWS Security Hub with a strong automation layer, maybe using something like AWS Config rules with automatic remediation.
It's a bit more DIY upfront, but you can write those remediations in Python as Lambda functions, which fits your shop perfectly. You'll get the structured JSON output you need for GitHub Actions, and the cost is way more predictable than the third-party tools.
My one caution on the native approach: the IaC scan piece often feels bolted-on unless you're using something like cfn_nag directly in your pipeline. Have you looked at integrating that separately?
ship it