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Overview

Prowler is the open source cloud security platform trusted by thousands to automate security and compliance in any cloud environment. With hundreds of ready-to-use checks and compliance frameworks, Prowler delivers real-time, customizable monitoring and seamless integrations, making cloud security simple, scalable, and cost-effective for organizations of any size.

The official supported providers right now are:

  • AWS
  • Azure
  • Google Cloud
  • Kubernetes
  • M365
  • Github

Prowler supports auditing, incident response, continuous monitoring, hardening, forensic readiness, and remediation.

Prowler Components

  • Prowler CLI (Command Line Interface) – Known as Prowler Open Source.
  • Prowler Cloud – A managed service built on top of Prowler CLI. More information: Prowler Cloud

Prowler App

Prowler App

Prowler App is a web application that simplifies running Prowler. It provides:

  • A user-friendly interface for configuring and executing scans.
  • A dashboard to view results and manage security findings.

Installation Guide

Refer to the Quick Start section for installation steps.

Prowler CLI

prowler <provider>
Prowler CLI Execution

Prowler Dashboard

prowler dashboard
Prowler Dashboard

Prowler includes hundreds of security controls aligned with widely recognized industry frameworks and standards, including:

  • CIS Benchmarks (AWS, Azure, Microsoft 365, Kubernetes, GitHub)
  • NIST SP 800-53 (rev. 4 and 5) and NIST SP 800-171
  • NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF)
  • CISA Guidelines
  • FedRAMP Low & Moderate
  • PCI DSS v3.2.1 and v4.0
  • ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and 2022
  • SOC 2
  • GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
  • HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)
  • FFIEC (Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council)
  • ENS RD2022 (Spanish National Security Framework)
  • GxP 21 CFR Part 11 and EU Annex 11
  • RBI Cybersecurity Framework (Reserve Bank of India)
  • KISA ISMS-P (Korean Information Security Management System)
  • MITRE ATT&CK
  • AWS Well-Architected Framework (Security & Reliability Pillars)
  • AWS Foundational Technical Review (FTR)
  • Microsoft NIS2 Directive (EU)
  • Custom threat scoring frameworks (prowler_threatscore)
  • Custom security frameworks for enterprise needs

Quick Start

Prowler App Installation

Prowler App supports multiple installation methods based on your environment.

Refer to the Prowler App Tutorial for detailed usage instructions.

Requirements:

Commands:

curl -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prowler-cloud/prowler/refs/heads/master/docker-compose.yml
curl -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prowler-cloud/prowler/refs/heads/master/.env
docker compose up -d

Containers are built for linux/amd64. If your workstation's architecture is different, please set DOCKER_DEFAULT_PLATFORM=linux/amd64 in your environment or use the --platform linux/amd64 flag in the docker command.

Enjoy Prowler App at http://localhost:3000 by signing up with your email and password.

Note

You can change the environment variables in the .env file. Note that it is not recommended to use the default values in production environments.

Note

There is a development mode available, you can use the file https://github.com/prowler-cloud/prowler/blob/master/docker-compose-dev.yml to run the app in development mode.

Warning

Google and GitHub authentication is only available in Prowler Cloud.

Requirements:

Warning

Make sure to have api/.env and ui/.env.local files with the required environment variables. You can find the required environment variables in the api/.env.template and ui/.env.template files.

Commands to run the API:

git clone https://github.com/prowler-cloud/prowler \
cd prowler/api \
poetry install \
eval $(poetry env activate) \
set -a \
source .env \
docker compose up postgres valkey -d \
cd src/backend \
python manage.py migrate --database admin \
gunicorn -c config/guniconf.py config.wsgi:application
Important

Starting from Poetry v2.0.0, poetry shell has been deprecated in favor of poetry env activate.

If your poetry version is below 2.0.0 you must keep using poetry shell to activate your environment. In case you have any doubts, consult the Poetry environment activation guide: https://python-poetry.org/docs/managing-environments/#activating-the-environment

Now, you can access the API documentation at http://localhost:8080/api/v1/docs.

Commands to run the API Worker:

git clone https://github.com/prowler-cloud/prowler \
cd prowler/api \
poetry install \
eval $(poetry env activate) \
set -a \
source .env \
cd src/backend \
python -m celery -A config.celery worker -l info -E

Commands to run the API Scheduler:

git clone https://github.com/prowler-cloud/prowler \
cd prowler/api \
poetry install \
eval $(poetry env activate) \
set -a \
source .env \
cd src/backend \
python -m celery -A config.celery beat -l info --scheduler django_celery_beat.schedulers:DatabaseScheduler

Commands to run the UI:

git clone https://github.com/prowler-cloud/prowler \
cd prowler/ui \
npm install \
npm run build \
npm start

Enjoy Prowler App at http://localhost:3000 by signing up with your email and password.

Warning

Google and GitHub authentication is only available in Prowler Cloud.

Prowler CLI Installation

Prowler is available as a project in PyPI. Consequently, it can be installed as Python package with Python >= 3.9, <= 3.12:

pipx is a tool to install Python applications in isolated environments. It is recommended to use pipx for a global installation.

Requirements:

  • Python >= 3.9, <= 3.12
  • pipx installed: pipx installation.
  • AWS, GCP, Azure and/or Kubernetes credentials

Commands:

pipx install prowler
prowler -v

To upgrade Prowler to the latest version, run:

pipx upgrade prowler
Warning

This method is not recommended because it will modify the environment which you choose to install. Consider using pipx for a global installation.

Requirements:

  • Python >= 3.9, <= 3.12
  • Python pip >= 21.0.0
  • AWS, GCP, Azure, M365 and/or Kubernetes credentials

Commands:

pip install prowler
prowler -v

To upgrade Prowler to the latest version, run:

pip install --upgrade prowler

Requirements:

  • Have docker installed: https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/.
  • In the command below, change -v to your local directory path in order to access the reports.
  • AWS, GCP, Azure and/or Kubernetes credentials

Containers are built for linux/amd64. If your workstation's architecture is different, please set DOCKER_DEFAULT_PLATFORM=linux/amd64 in your environment or use the --platform linux/amd64 flag in the docker command.

Commands:

docker run -ti --rm -v /your/local/dir/prowler-output:/home/prowler/output \
--name prowler \
--env AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID \
--env AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY \
--env AWS_SESSION_TOKEN toniblyx/prowler:latest

Requirements for Developers:

Commands:

git clone https://github.com/prowler-cloud/prowler
cd prowler
poetry install
poetry run python prowler-cli.py -v
Note

If you want to clone Prowler from Windows, use git config core.longpaths true to allow long file paths.

Requirements:

  • Python >= 3.9, <= 3.12
  • AWS, GCP, Azure and/or Kubernetes credentials

Commands:

python3 -m pip install --user pipx
python3 -m pipx ensurepath
pipx install prowler
prowler -v

Requirements:

  • Ubuntu 23.04 or above, if you are using an older version of Ubuntu check pipx installation and ensure you have Python >= 3.9, <= 3.12.
  • Python >= 3.9, <= 3.12
  • AWS, GCP, Azure and/or Kubernetes credentials

Commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install pipx
pipx ensurepath
pipx install prowler
prowler -v

Requirements:

  • Brew installed in your Mac or Linux
  • AWS, GCP, Azure and/or Kubernetes credentials

Commands:

brew install prowler
prowler -v

After the migration of AWS CloudShell from Amazon Linux 2 to Amazon Linux 2023 [1] [2], there is no longer a need to manually compile Python 3.9 as it is already included in AL2023. Prowler can thus be easily installed following the generic method of installation via pip. Follow the steps below to successfully execute Prowler v4 in AWS CloudShell:

Requirements:

  • Open AWS CloudShell bash.

Commands:

sudo bash
adduser prowler
su prowler
python3 -m pip install --user pipx
python3 -m pipx ensurepath
pipx install prowler
cd /tmp
prowler aws
Note

To download the results from AWS CloudShell, select Actions -> Download File and add the full path of each file. For the CSV file it will be something like /tmp/output/prowler-output-123456789012-20221220191331.csv

Requirements:

  • Open Azure CloudShell bash.

Commands:

python3 -m pip install --user pipx
python3 -m pipx ensurepath
pipx install prowler
cd /tmp
prowler azure --az-cli-auth

Prowler App Update

You have two options to upgrade your Prowler App installation:

Option 1: Change env file with the following values

Edit your .env file and change the version values:

PROWLER_UI_VERSION="5.9.0"
PROWLER_API_VERSION="5.9.0"

Option 2: Run the following command

docker compose pull --policy always

The --policy always flag ensures that Docker pulls the latest images even if they already exist locally.

What Gets Preserved During Upgrade

Everything is preserved, nothing will be deleted after the update.

Troubleshooting

If containers don't start, check logs for errors:

# Check logs for errors
docker compose logs

# Verify image versions
docker images | grep prowler

If you encounter issues, you can rollback to the previous version by changing the .env file back to your previous version and running:

docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

Prowler container versions

The available versions of Prowler CLI are the following:

  • latest: in sync with master branch (please note that it is not a stable version)
  • v4-latest: in sync with v4 branch (please note that it is not a stable version)
  • v3-latest: in sync with v3 branch (please note that it is not a stable version)
  • <x.y.z> (release): you can find the releases here, those are stable releases.
  • stable: this tag always point to the latest release.
  • v4-stable: this tag always point to the latest release for v4.
  • v3-stable: this tag always point to the latest release for v3.

The container images are available here:

High level architecture

You can run Prowler from your workstation, a Kubernetes Job, a Google Compute Engine, an Azure VM, an EC2 instance, Fargate or any other container, CloudShell and many more.

Architecture

Prowler App

The Prowler App consists of three main components:

  • Prowler UI: A user-friendly web interface for running Prowler and viewing results, powered by Next.js.
  • Prowler API: The backend API that executes Prowler scans and stores the results, built with Django REST Framework.
  • Prowler SDK: A Python SDK that integrates with Prowler CLI for advanced functionality.

The app leverages the following supporting infrastructure:

  • PostgreSQL: Used for persistent storage of scan results.
  • Celery Workers: Facilitate asynchronous execution of Prowler scans.
  • Valkey: An in-memory database serving as a message broker for the Celery workers.

Prowler App Architecture

Deprecations from v3

The following are the deprecations carried out from v3.

General

  • Allowlist now is called Mutelist.
  • The --quiet option has been deprecated. From now on use the --status flag to select the finding's status you want to get: PASS, FAIL or MANUAL.
  • All INFO finding's status has changed to MANUAL.
  • The CSV output format is common for all providers.

Some output formats are now deprecated:

  • The native JSON is replaced for the JSON OCSF v1.1.0, common for all the providers.

AWS

  • Deprecate the AWS flag --sts-endpoint-region since AWS STS regional tokens are used.
  • To send only FAILS to AWS Security Hub, now you must use either --send-sh-only-fails or --security-hub --status FAIL.

Basic Usage

Prowler App

Access the App

Go to http://localhost:3000 after installing the app (see Quick Start). Sign up with your email and password.

Sign Up Button Sign Up

User creation and default tenant behavior

When creating a new user, the behavior depends on whether an invitation is provided:

  • Without an invitation:

    • A new tenant is automatically created.
    • The new user is assigned to this tenant.
    • A set of RBAC admin permissions is generated and assigned to the user for the newly-created tenant.

  • With an invitation: The user is added to the specified tenant with the permissions defined in the invitation.

This mechanism ensures that the first user in a newly created tenant has administrative permissions within that tenant.

Log In

Log in using your email and password to access the Prowler App.

Log In

Add a Cloud Provider

To configure a cloud provider for scanning:

  1. Navigate to Settings > Cloud Providers and click Add Account.
  2. Select the cloud provider you wish to scan (AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes).
  3. Enter the provider's identifier (Optional: Add an alias):
    • AWS: Account ID
    • GCP: Project ID
    • Azure: Subscription ID
    • Kubernetes: Cluster ID
    • M36: Domain ID
  4. Follow the guided instructions to add and authenticate your credentials.

Start a Scan

Once credentials are successfully added and validated, Prowler initiates a scan of your cloud environment.

Click Go to Scans to monitor progress.

View Results

While the scan is running, you can review findings in the following sections:

  • Overview – Provides a high-level summary of your scans. Overview

  • Compliance – Displays compliance insights based on security frameworks. Compliance

For detailed usage instructions, refer to the Prowler App Guide.

Note

Prowler will automatically scan all configured providers every 24 hours, ensuring your cloud environment stays continuously monitored.

Prowler CLI

Running Prowler

To run Prowler, you will need to specify the provider (e.g aws, gcp, azure, m365, github or kubernetes):

Note

If no provider is specified, AWS is used by default for backward compatibility with Prowler v2.

prowler <provider>
Prowler Execution

Note

Running the prowler command without options will uses environment variable credentials. Refer to the Requirements section for credential configuration details.

Verbose Output

If you prefer the former verbose output, use: --verbose. This allows seeing more info while Prowler is running, minimal output is displayed unless verbosity is enabled.

Report Generation

By default, Prowler generates CSV, JSON-OCSF, and HTML reports. To generate a JSON-ASFF report (used by AWS Security Hub), specify -M or --output-modes:

prowler <provider> -M csv json-asff json-ocsf html
The HTML report is saved in the output directory, alongside other reports. It will look like this:

Prowler Execution

Listing Available Checks and Services

To view all available checks or services within a provider:, use -l/--list-checks or --list-services.

prowler <provider> --list-checks
prowler <provider> --list-services

Running Specific Checks or Services

Execute specific checks or services using -c/checks or -s/services:

prowler azure --checks storage_blob_public_access_level_is_disabled
prowler aws --services s3 ec2
prowler gcp --services iam compute
prowler kubernetes --services etcd apiserver

Excluding Checks and Services

Checks and services can be excluded with -e/--excluded-checks or --excluded-services:

prowler aws --excluded-checks s3_bucket_public_access
prowler azure --excluded-services defender iam
prowler gcp --excluded-services kms
prowler kubernetes --excluded-services controllermanager

Additional Options

Explore more advanced time-saving execution methods in the Miscellaneous section.

To access the help menu and view all available options, use: -h/--help:

prowler --help

AWS

Use a custom AWS profile with -p/--profile and/or the AWS regions you want to audit with -f/--filter-region:

prowler aws --profile custom-profile -f us-east-1 eu-south-2
Note

By default, prowler will scan all AWS regions.

See more details about AWS Authentication in the Requirements section.

Azure

Azure requires specifying the auth method:

# To use service principal authentication
prowler azure --sp-env-auth

# To use az cli authentication
prowler azure --az-cli-auth

# To use browser authentication
prowler azure --browser-auth --tenant-id "XXXXXXXX"

# To use managed identity auth
prowler azure --managed-identity-auth

See more details about Azure Authentication in Requirements

By default, Prowler scans all the subscriptions for which it has permissions. To scan a single or various specific subscription you can use the following flag (using az cli auth as example):

prowler azure --az-cli-auth --subscription-ids <subscription ID 1> <subscription ID 2> ... <subscription ID N>

Google Cloud

  • User Account Credentials

    By default, Prowler uses User Account credentials. You can configure your account using:

    • gcloud init – Set up a new account.
    • gcloud config set account <account> – Switch to an existing account.

    Once configured, obtain access credentials using: gcloud auth application-default login.

  • Service Account Authentication

    Alternatively, you can use Service Account credentials:

    Generate and download Service Account keys in JSON format. Refer to Google IAM documentation for details.

    Provide the key file location using this argument:

    prowler gcp --credentials-file path

  • Scanning Specific GCP Projects

    By default, Prowler scans all accessible GCP projects. To scan specific projects, use the --project-ids flag:

    prowler gcp --project-ids <Project ID 1> <Project ID 2> ... <Project ID N>

  • GCP Retry Configuration

    To configure the maximum number of retry attempts for Google Cloud SDK API calls, use the --gcp-retries-max-attempts flag:

    prowler gcp --gcp-retries-max-attempts 5

    This is useful when experiencing quota exceeded errors (HTTP 429) to increase the number of automatic retry attempts.

Kubernetes

Prowler enables security scanning of Kubernetes clusters, supporting both in-cluster and external execution.

  • Non In-Cluster Execution

    prowler kubernetes --kubeconfig-file path
    Note

    If no --kubeconfig-file is provided, Prowler will use the default KubeConfig file location (~/.kube/config).

  • In-Cluster Execution

    To run Prowler inside the cluster, apply the provided YAML configuration to deploy a job in a new namespace:

    kubectl apply -f kubernetes/prowler-sa.yaml
kubectl apply -f kubernetes/job.yaml
kubectl apply -f kubernetes/prowler-role.yaml
kubectl apply -f kubernetes/prowler-rolebinding.yaml
kubectl get pods --namespace prowler-ns --> prowler-XXXXX
kubectl logs prowler-XXXXX --namespace prowler-ns
    Note

    By default, Prowler scans all namespaces in the active Kubernetes context. Use the --contextflag to specify the context to be scanned and --namespaces to restrict scanning to specific namespaces.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 requires specifying the auth method:

# To use service principal authentication for MSGraph and PowerShell modules
prowler m365 --sp-env-auth

# To use both service principal (for MSGraph) and user credentials (for PowerShell modules)
prowler m365 --env-auth

# To use az cli authentication
prowler m365 --az-cli-auth

# To use browser authentication
prowler m365 --browser-auth --tenant-id "XXXXXXXX"

See more details about M365 Authentication in the Requirements section.

GitHub

Prowler enables security scanning of your GitHub account, including Repositories, Organizations and Applications.

  • Supported Authentication Methods

    Authenticate using one of the following methods:

    # Personal Access Token (PAT):
prowler github --personal-access-token pat

# OAuth App Token:
prowler github --oauth-app-token oauth_token

# GitHub App Credentials:
prowler github --github-app-id app_id --github-app-key app_key
    Note

    If no login method is explicitly provided, Prowler will automatically attempt to authenticate using environment variables in the following order of precedence:

    1. GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN
    2. OAUTH_APP_TOKEN
    3. GITHUB_APP_ID and GITHUB_APP_KEY

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Prowler's Infrastructure as Code (IaC) provider enables you to scan local or remote infrastructure code for security and compliance issues using Checkov. This provider supports a wide range of IaC frameworks, allowing you to assess your code before deployment.

# Scan a directory for IaC files
prowler iac --scan-path ./my-iac-directory

# Scan a remote GitHub repository (public or private)
prowler iac --scan-repository-url https://github.com/user/repo.git

# Authenticate to a private repo with GitHub username and PAT
prowler iac --scan-repository-url https://github.com/user/repo.git \
  --github-username <username> --personal-access-token <token>

# Authenticate to a private repo with OAuth App Token
prowler iac --scan-repository-url https://github.com/user/repo.git \
  --oauth-app-token <oauth_token>

# Specify frameworks to scan (default: all)
prowler iac --scan-path ./my-iac-directory --frameworks terraform kubernetes

# Exclude specific paths
prowler iac --scan-path ./my-iac-directory --exclude-path ./my-iac-directory/test,./my-iac-directory/examples
Note
  • --scan-path and --scan-repository-url are mutually exclusive; only one can be specified at a time.
  • For remote repository scans, authentication can be provided via CLI flags or environment variables (GITHUB_OAUTH_APP_TOKEN, GITHUB_USERNAME, GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN). CLI flags take precedence.
  • The IaC provider does not require cloud authentication for local scans.
  • It is ideal for CI/CD pipelines and local development environments.
  • For more details on supported frameworks and rules, see the Checkov documentation

See more details about IaC scanning in the IaC Tutorial section.

Prowler v2 Documentation

For Prowler v2 Documentation, refer to the official repository.