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Posted by: Hasan Sameer
August 3, 2022
The traditional penetration testing methods are devised to operate in on-premises environments. These techniques are not cloud-native. Cloud pen testing involves a shared responsibility model. There are policies that define and divide the responsibilities for the components within a cloud infrastructure, platform, or software. For instance, AWS has its own list of aspects you can run tests on and the ones that Amazon takes care of itself. The tester needs to be aware of these policies. Also, cloud pentesting requires different skill sets and expertise than regular penetration testing methods.
of all the data workload was managed by cloud data centers by 2021
of cybersecurity professionals express concern about misconfigurations
of cloud users say that they conduct pen tests at least once a year
of respondents in 2022 say that their pen tests uncover misconfigurations
Organizations across the world are rapidly migrating their assets and business-related data from physical servers to the cloud. The exponential increase in cloud usage is due to the on-demand delivery of IT services. The Cherry on the cake is, the agility + flexibility offered by the cloud service providers reduces the dependency of the users on them.
Even though, clouds are an effective, scalable way to provide access to company data. There is always a blind spot when it comes to security. Most companies using cloud infrastructure, underestimate the security policies. Along with it, there is always a threat of misconfigurations.
Eventually, the misconfigurations in the cloud infrastructure might lead to breaches, data theft, compliance violations, lost revenue, and other damaging consequences. Cloud pentesting helps to scan and rule out all these misconfigurations and other such vulnerabilities that might be a potential cause of chaos.
Building on that, let’s have a deep look at
Giving deep thought to the questions related to the significance of your cloud infrastructure for your business is a substantial part of risk assessment. Also, calculating the loss if it goes down under a cyber attack is a crucial part of it. Cloud pen testing evaluates every single relevant detail and uncovers all the risks and their potential impact over time. The result of risk assessment over your cloud infrastructure gives you a clear idea about its security status. Also, you can prioritize the risks and address them in the order of how critical they are.
Clouds have their own regulatory and compliance requirements to meet. Additionally, there are regulatory requirements to meet according to the domain of your business. For instance, if your company processes payments through online gateways. Then you need to meet the PCI compliance to keep it operational. Similarly, meeting compliances with HIPAA and HITECH is necessary if your business is associated with healthcare activities. When you conduct risk assessments, it gives you the exact status of your compliance requirements. You get an idea of where you are falling behind and what you need to do.
Data is arguably the most important asset in the business world. If you are using the cloud, then it’s clear that you are handling a substantial amount of data. A company’s database on the cloud usually possesses a lot of clients’ data. If somehow your cloud infrastructure is breached, and the data is compromised, there is no turning back the damage done to your company’s reputation. Cloud pentesting has one of the key upsides in that – it can help you prevent attacks on your clouds. As a result, your data on the cloud is safe and so is your reputation.
Cloud pen testing is essential to keep you alive in the competition more than you think. A lot of organizations store their proprietary information on cloud storage. A breach of this proprietary data might be disastrous. However, it is unlikely that your competitors launch an attack on your cloud to get that data. But hackers often publicize their wins over different platforms such as Pastebin. Also, they sell the data over the dark web. It then becomes easy for your rivals to get that data and use it to their advantage in the competition.
