Today, over 95% of businesses utilize cloud computing. At the same time, companies often lack proper security protocols to manage this rapidly developing digital landscape.

While cloud services, such as those provided by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, are far more secure than most on-premises servers, even the tech giants can't protect you if your account is poorly configured or when data leaves the secure environment while users access, transport or download content.

To stay protected, then, it's important to understand the key security vulnerabilities associated with cloud computing, and develop techniques and protocols to mitigate these risks. To help get you started, here's a list of our top four cloud security tips:

Security Misconfigurations

The number one issue we find during our Cloud Security Audits are misconfigured cloud environments. While it's easy to lay the blame for this on the IT team, the truth is that cloud providers now offer incredibly complex and multi-faceted services. For example, AWS now offers close to 200 services, from S3 storage and elastic container management all the way to managed blockchain and game development. No wonder, then, that your AWS account comes with hundreds of hours of tutorials, which many developers don't have the time or skills to properly digest.

Most often, we find that businesses struggle to maintain appropriate levels of user access, data encryption, and MFA protections. To keep up, employing an MSSP to provide either around-the-clock monitoring or periodic cloud audits can go a long way. In the long term, however, we believe it's important for companies to grow their in-house capabilities. To help, we've developed tools such as Quantum Armor which integrates directly into your virtual service, runs automated cloud audits, and then returns a step-by-step plan to guide you through the configuration process. This way, any open S3 buckets or default credentials will be immediately spotted and queued for mitigation.

Log Analysis

With cloud security, the devil is very often in the details. This means that an effective approach to log analysis can provide tremendous value and proactive potential for your organization. Today's engineers, however, are already drowning in data, and cloud computing has only contributed to that wealth of information. Trying to comb through the generated logs from all of your virtual resources would immediately swamp even the best of teams.

It's therefore crucial to choose an appropriate log analysis tool that will flag any suspicious or unusual activities so your team can focus on the most pressing issues. In addition, having a deep and clear insight into your network performance and activities will help you proactively allocate resources and plan system updates for the future.

End User Monitoring

Similar to log analysis, monitoring your end user activities can go a long way in spotting suspicious login attempts or user actions. Especially as companies continue to adapt to remote work, employees are increasingly relying on personal devices, home network connections, and shadow IT. Maintaining oversight over who is connecting from where will remain a core challenge for cloud security in the near term.

On the upside, however, once you have tools and processes in place to manage user and device access, you'll be able to leverage those capabilities to shut down any would-be attackers before they even get off the ground.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Cybersecurity includes being prepared when things go wrong. Even the best systems fail, and with more and more resources being housed virtually, it's important to maintain proper disaster recovery and business continuity readiness.

Disaster Recovery includes everything necessary to help your business restore any capabilities lost due to a natural disaster, software glitch, or malicious activities. This will typically include everything from replication mechanisms and service restoration to threat containment and eradication. Business Continuity, on the other hand, focuses on understanding the impact of specific events on the business at large, and develops procedures for how to proceed in the face of service outages or other interruptions. Typically, this will include building out a Business Impact Analysis, threat modelling, risk assessments as well as running periodic tabletop exercises.

How We Can Help

At Silent Breach, all of our engagements are end-to-end tailored to your organization's specific environment. Whether you're hosted by AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or any other cloud platform, we will pair you with the ideal resources to ensure that your assessment is as effective and efficient as possible.

Furthermore, we offer stand-alone configuration reviews, architecture audits, hardening exercises, and tactical coaching in order to create a custom fit with your organization's gaps.

Finally, sign up for Quantum Armor for Cloud Security to streamline and manage your entire cloud security workflow. Utilizing a range of proprietary algorithms, Quantum Armor helps you manage, audit, and harden your cloud instance without installing any agents. This is done by leveraging the APIs that are already in place and provided by the cloud vendors themselves. Additionally, cloud security controls, metrics, and logs can be monitored on a daily basis to spot any suspicious activity or potential attacks.


Talk with one of our representatives today to learn more about how we can help improve your security. For a limited time, Quantum Armor licenses are being offered completely free of charge so that you can test-drive our platform 100% risk-free!


Additional Resources:
Top Four Benefits of Attack Surface Management
US Companies Struggle To Notice When They've Been Hacked
Top Five Challenges Facing CISOs in 2021