"We thought our IAM was under control. Policies were documented. Reviews were scheduled. Exceptions were tracked in a shared doc."
But when we ran Cloudshot's drift monitoring on our own infrastructure, we saw something that made us pause.
Dozens of IAM changes. Subtle. Unintended. Stacking up over time. Not dangerous—yet. But definitely not compliant.
These weren't reckless moves. They were human ones.
A quick permission bump to unblock a deploy. A role change that skipped the final review. A temporary access tweak that became permanent.
Each change looked harmless in isolation. But together, they were slowly creating a security gap.
So, we turned Cloudshot on ourselves. And what happened next helped us redefine how we manage IAM internally.
The Features That Made the Difference
We didn't throw more people at the problem. We used the same Cloudshot engine our customers use—configured for our own infra.
Here's exactly what helped us reduce IAM drift by 85% in 30 days:
IAM Graph Mapping across AWS, Azure, and GCP
Cloudshot gave us a real-time, visual map of every user, role, and permission path. We saw over-permissioned accounts, orphaned policies, and unnecessary cross-account access we hadn't touched in months.
Drift Detection Engine
Cloudshot continuously compared our live IAM state against our policy baseline. It flagged misalignments instantly—like missing MFA, legacy assume-role chains, or permissions that no longer matched our access policies.
Ownership-Based Alerting
Each drift alert was automatically assigned to the responsible team. Instead of pinging "#infra" in Slack, we knew exactly who needed to fix what—without chasing them.
IAM Change Attribution Logs
For every change, Cloudshot told us who made it, when it happened, and how it deviated from policy. We no longer had to dig through cloud logs or build timelines. The answers were just… there.
Tag-Backed Visibility Dashboards
We enforced IAM tagging standards like team, criticality, and purpose across services. Cloudshot scored our compliance in real time—so we didn't just see the violations, we saw where to focus improvement.
What Changed
The Results Were Immediate
Within a few days, we had a complete picture of where we were drifting and why. Within a week, drift alerts became team-level action items. Within 30 days, we had cut IAM drift by 85%. No heroics. No spreadsheets. No manual reviews. Just clarity, automation, and real accountability.
"IAM drift doesn't usually show up with a siren. It creeps in. Slowly. Silently. Over time. By the time it causes a security review failure—or worse—a breach, it's already been there for weeks or months."
And most teams don't have the visibility to catch it early. Not because they're careless. But because they're operating with the wrong tools.
The Cloudshot Difference
We didn't fix IAM by trying harder. We fixed it by seeing sooner.
Real-time visibility into all access paths
Smart policy drift detection
Ownership-based routing
Full change attribution
Tag-driven clarity at scale
If you're relying on quarterly IAM reviews or spreadsheets to track who changed what—you're already exposed.
Want to See What IAM Drift Looks Like in Real Time?
We built Cloudshot to solve problems we were facing ourselves.
And now, it's helping security and DevOps teams stay in control without slowing down.
See the Difference Real-Time IAM Visibility Makes
Cloudshot is the visibility layer your security strategy has been missing. And it's already helping teams reduce IAM drift without manual reviews.