Cloud Audit

What is Cloud Audit?

Cloud computing provides computational services over the internet and allows companies’ users to be flexible and scalable by accessing computing resources through web browsers and mobile devices. Cloud computing enables businesses to reduce their hardware costs, increase operational efficiencies, and reduce IT management costs.

The transition to the cloud has brought new security challenges as adversaries exploit configuration errors and permissive policies controlled via the Cloud Service Providers (CSP) such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). According to the Verizon 2021 report, “73% of the cybersecurity incidents involved external cloud assets”.

A cyber security cloud audit is essential for a cyber security risk assessment process. During the audit, identity management, network security, storage, and other policies are reviewed. The auditor will examine security postures in compliance with CIS benchmarks and internally develop best practices to ensure that the cloud infrastructure is secured and robust against cloud infrastructure cyber attacks.

Common Cloud Security Misconfigurations

• Excessive Access – Cloud resources and services often grant users and applications unnecessary access and permissions. This excessive access increases the risk of a security incident caused by compromised credentials, mis­used permissions, or employee neglect.
• Default Accounts and Passwords – Various applications and websites’ default accounts and passwords are widely known. If you fail to disable default accounts or password reset them, you may leave your cloud infrastructure vulnerable to credential-stuffing attacks.
• Publicly-Accessible Assets – Organizations may inadvertently expose storage assets such as files and folders saved in buckets to the internet or other cloud services, allowing adversaries to access restricted data.
• Unnecessary Features – Cloud services, applications, and environments may come bundled with unnecessary features. Not disabling features that the organization does use increases the digital attack surface.