Cloud Security
AWS, Azure & GCP Security Assessment
Misconfiguration and privilege escalation assessment across your cloud environments — IAM, storage, networking, containers.
What is Cloud Security?
Cloud environments are fundamentally different to on-premises infrastructure — and so are the vulnerabilities. The shared responsibility model means security misconfiguration sits entirely with you. Our Cloud Security assessment evaluates your AWS, Azure, or GCP environment for the misconfigurations, identity and access management weaknesses, and privilege escalation paths that lead to the majority of cloud breaches.
We go beyond automated cloud security posture management (CSPM) tools that report configuration deviations. Our operators manually enumerate IAM privilege escalation paths, test storage bucket and blob storage access controls, probe serverless functions and container workloads, and identify cross-account trust relationships that create lateral movement opportunities.
Every cloud security assessment includes a review of your cloud-native security controls — security groups, VPC design, CloudTrail/Azure Monitor logging configuration, GuardDuty/Defender for Cloud alerting, and secrets management (Secrets Manager, Key Vault) — giving you a complete picture of your cloud security posture.
Why it matters
- Over 80% of cloud security incidents are caused by misconfiguration — not sophisticated exploits
- IAM privilege escalation in AWS/Azure/GCP allows an attacker starting from a low-privilege role to reach admin-level access through chained permission abuses
- Storage buckets and blobs with public access remain one of the most common causes of mass data leaks
- Serverless functions and containers are deployed rapidly and often inherit excessive permissions from their execution roles
- Cloud environments are dynamic — misconfigurations introduced in CI/CD pipelines accumulate faster than manual review can catch
Our methodology
1. Cloud Inventory & Access Review
Comprehensive inventory of all cloud resources across regions using read-only credentials. Identification of all IAM users, roles, groups, service accounts, and their effective permissions — including indirect permissions via resource-based policies.
2. IAM Privilege Escalation Analysis
Manual analysis of IAM privilege escalation paths — the chains of permissions that allow a low-privilege identity to reach admin access. We use tools including Pacu, PMapper, and ScoutSuite supplemented by manual analysis.
3. Resource Configuration Assessment
Systematic review of storage, networking, compute, serverless, and container resources for misconfigurations: public access, missing encryption, permissive security groups, exposed management ports, and overly permissive cross-account trusts.
4. Security Control Verification
Verification that cloud-native security controls are correctly configured: logging coverage, alerting thresholds, backup and recovery settings, key management, and secret rotation practices.
Frequently asked questions
What cloud platforms do you assess?
AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. We also assess multi-cloud environments and Kubernetes clusters (self-managed or via managed services like EKS, AKS, GKE). For organisations using Oracle Cloud or Alibaba Cloud, contact us to discuss scope.
Do you need our cloud account credentials?
We use a temporary read-only IAM role or service account with the minimum permissions required for assessment. We never require root/owner credentials. We provide the exact permissions policy we need before the engagement starts.
How is this different from running a CSPM tool ourselves?
CSPM tools report configuration deviations against rules. They don't understand privilege escalation chains, can't reason about combined misconfigurations, and don't provide exploitation context. Our operators add the adversarial perspective — understanding not just what's misconfigured, but what an attacker can actually do with it.
Can you assess our Kubernetes clusters?
Yes. Kubernetes security assessment covers RBAC misconfigurations, container privilege escalation, network policy gaps, secrets management, image scanning, admission controller configuration, and pod security standards compliance.
We use Terraform/Pulumi for IaC — can you review our templates?
Yes. IaC review is an optional component that complements the live environment assessment. We identify security misconfigurations in templates before they're deployed, and provide remediation directly in IaC format where possible.
Deliverables
Cloud Security Posture Report
Full assessment of cloud configuration against CIS Cloud Benchmarks and provider best practices
IAM Privilege Escalation Map
Visual graph of discovered privilege escalation paths with exploitation guidance
Resource Risk Inventory
Prioritised list of all misconfigured resources with risk ratings and remediation guidance
Terraform/IaC Remediation
Where infrastructure-as-code is used, remediation provided in IaC format for direct merge
Compliance Mapping
Findings mapped to applicable compliance frameworks (CIS, SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS)
Retest Report
Post-remediation verification of critical and high findings
Industries served
Start your engagement
Talk to a certified operator about scoping a Cloud Security assessment for your environment.
Contact UsView Sample ReportRelated services
Ready to test your Cloud Security posture?
All engagements are led by certified operators with unlimited retests until every critical finding is resolved.