This blog post is part three of our four-part series on security in the cloud. In part one, we discussed the AWS shared responsibility model, and in part two, we discussed detecting, prioritizing, and remediating vulnerabilities. Today, in part three, we will cover how to handle misconfigurations in the cloud. This blog post was co-authored by Tori Sitcawich and Aaron Sawitsky.
The prevalence of cloud misconfigurations
Misconfigurations in the cloud are becoming a prevalent source of risk for organizations as more and more businesses move their infrastructure to the cloud. In fact, in our 2018 Under the Hoodie report, we discovered that network and service misconfigurations were found 96% of the time during internal penetration testing. The root cause of this increased risk is that in a cloud environment, far more people can setup and deploy network infrastructure, whereas in an on-premises network, that ability is usually restricted to IT professionals who are well-versed in security best-practices.
It’s important to note that while misconfigurations are a risk, they can be effectively managed. With the right tools and processes in place, you can leverage cloud infrastructure in a secure way. Correctly configuring cloud infrastructure requires close collaboration among development, IT, operations, and security teams. It also requires an understanding of proper configurations.
As a result, scanning for vulnerabilities alone is not enough to manage risk in your cloud infrastructure—you also need a strategy to prevent misconfigurations, as well as a purpose-built way to detect them when they still manage to sneak their way through.
Misconfigurations: A gateway to larger attacks
A misconfiguration can ..
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