Chances are, your business is already operating in the cloud. The rewards of moving into the cloud are undeniable - organizations can build and launch new services and add computing capacity more easily than on premises in a more cost-effective manner. The cloud is indispensable for growing at the speed of the market.
However, the risks of the cloud can be significant if you aren’t actively evaluating and testing your cloud security. There are several examples that likely have you attuned to the risks. Consider a 2019 attack against a financial institution, which disclosed approximately 106 million customer names and addresses 106 million customer names and addresses. This breach occured as a result of misconfigured permissions within an AWS EC2 instance . Due to the misconfigured IAM permissions on an AWS role, customer records were exposed to unauthorized users. This was costly, as the U.S. Government assessed them an $80 million fine.
This breach stresses just how important the need of security controls in the cloud and why you must make sure the security controls you have in place are actually working. How can you do this? One particularly effective solution is cloud penetration testing.
What Is Cloud Penetration Testing?
Cloud penetration testing takes the principles of penetration testing and customizes them specifically to the infrastructure and risks of the cloud. Penetration testing is crucial to a mature security program, both in the cloud and on premises. It is a way of finding out, in a practical sense, what the vulnerabilities in your systems and networks are and what effect they have on your business.
Why You Need Regular Cloud Penetration Testing
When operating on the cloud, security becomes a shared responsibility between you and your cloud service provider. Cloud providers such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure are responsible for securing the underlying services. However, when you start deploying and configuring those services, it’s your responsibility to make sure what you deploy is secure. Penetration testing is a core component of fulfilling that responsibility.
Penetration testing goes well beyond automated scanning; it brings in people to research those vulnerabilities, act like an attacker, and figure out how your network weaknesses can lead to actual data compromise. Even if you’ve worked out the best possible cloud security measures, penetration testing helps you understand whether these measures are effective.
Penetration testing helps you prioritize security issues for remediation. Since it shows how exploitable particular issues in the environment are, you can focus on those that are easier to exploit or more likely to be targeted and make higher-impact decisions that produce quick security wins. An expert penetration tester can also give you actionable advice about how to remediate the issues that were identified in the test, so you can strengthen your cloud security going forward.
The Cloud Penetration Testing Difference
Cloud penetration testing has the same goal as traditional enterprise penetration testing: protecting your business, your finances, and your reputation by keeping data secure. The stakes are the same too — compromised data and intellectual property breaches, financial losses, legal liabilities, and loss of credibility.
However, cloud penetration testing requires a different approach than traditional enterprise penetration testing because the cloud operates on a different stack. Attackers are adapting to the fact that services are configured differently and function differently in the cloud than in traditional physical or on-premises infrastructure. This means penetration testers must adapt as well. Experts who know about cloud penetration testing methodology and who have a vast experience in testing cloud systems are more likely to be able to identify exploitable vulnerabilities and provide actionable guidance around remediating them.
Vulnerabilities in the Cloud
A cloud-focused penetration test is designed to analyze cloud environments and find problems that significantly impact your business risk. Common vulnerabilities that cloud penetration testing can detect include:
Misconfigured Accounts, Access Lists, and Buckets
The most common vulnerabilities that lead to cloud compromise are misconfigurations of accounts, access lists, and data containers (or, in cloud lingo, “buckets”). The principle of least privilege, a security fundamental that predates the cloud, matters just as much but often does not make its way into practice. Sometimes accounts or access lists are configured to have access to more data than they need, or buckets are configured to be available to more accounts than should access them.
Weak Authentication Credentials
Attackers are actively scanning for cloud services and trying to identify those with weak credentials. When an attacker discovers an account with a weak password, they are likely to investigate to find out what they can access in the account. This can lead to a compromise of all the information that account can access—and, if the principle of least privilege has been ignored, it can lead to even deeper compromise.
Publicly Available Credentials
Another easy way to get the cloud hacked is when credentials for cloud accounts get uploaded to open sources. In the 2016 Uber breach, which led to the compromise of information associated with over 57 million people, the attacker found AWS S3 credentials in a publicly available code repository. An effective cloud penetration test can help identify sensitive information in publicly available repositories, discover the likely repercussions, and provide advice on how to improve that aspect of your security posture.
Why Consider a Cloud Penetration Testing Partner?
Virtually every organization is working with the cloud, but most organizations don’t have the requisite cloud penetration testing tools, processes or professionals in house. However, when testing cloud security, it matters that the people involved know how to test and remediate insecure cloud services. Finding cybersecurity expertise can be difficult for businesses of all sizes, but to move forward and remain confident in the security of your cloud operations, it is expertise your business needs. Partnering with a trusted cloud security provider can help you build the bridge between where your cloud program is and where it needs to be from a security perspective.
Specifically, a cloud penetration testing partner must demonstrate that it has a track record of testing and securing cloud infrastructure and an established methodology for doing so. A cloud penetration testing partner must keep up with the changing security landscape, since both the world of cloud services and the threat landscape in the cloud are changing rapidly. They should also have strong experience with providing actionable cloud security advice.
Moving Forward with a Trusted Partner
When considering a cloud penetration testing partner, Kroll stands out with its extensive experience and expertise to secure your business in the cloud. With deep and unmatched proficiency in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud services, Kroll is well-equipped to help you strengthen your security posture. Our collaborative approach means we get to know your business and can work as a true extension of your security team.
Trusted by companies across various industries, Kroll is dedicated to securing your cloud environments. Learn more about Kroll’s cloud security experience and how we can help you reach your cloud and digital transformation goals securely.
