The cloud environment is continuously evolving. The new workload is created, permissions are adjusted, new services are made available, and infrastructure scales in minutes. Such flexibility opens additional vulnerabilities and chances for security misconfigurations to slip into your environment.
Cloud security benchmarks allow companies to check whether their cloud environments are configured according to recommended best practices. By creating a security baseline, companies can understand how well their cloud security is implemented and improve it.
Cloud security benchmarks are predefined security recommendations designed to assess the configuration of cloud infrastructure and services. They can be applied to the following areas: identity and access management, network security, data protection, logging, monitoring, encryption, and resource configuration.
There are several frameworks (for example, CIS Benchmarks) that suggest recommendations to improve the security of cloud platforms and workloads. Organizations can also develop their own internal benchmarks according to their needs, risks, and regulations.
Without a defined baseline, security teams will face difficulties understanding how secure their cloud environment is. Different teams will follow different configuration practices and, thus, security will be inconsistent.
Creating a benchmark means creating a unified security standard. This allows organizations to compare their current configuration of cloud infrastructure with the benchmarked configuration and understand what changes should be made.
Cloud security benchmark should include various layers of the cloud environment. Identity controls may check excessive permissions, inactive identities, privileged access, and authentication requirements.
Network controls may verify whether there are any exposed management ports, any unregulated firewall rules, any insecure security groups, and any unnecessary internet exposure. Data protection controls may assess encryption, data storage access, backup configuration, and key management.
Logging and monitoring controls are also very important. They can verify whether all the necessary cloud activities are being logged, whether logs are protected from the modifications by anyone except authorized security professionals, and whether the cloud security events are being monitored properly.
The main limitation of the traditional approach to security assessments is that it gives only a picture of the current status. Cloud infrastructure can change dramatically very fast and, consequently, you will never be sure whether everything is still correct.
The Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools allow continuously comparing cloud resources with security benchmarks and policies. As soon as something deviates from the defined security baseline, security teams receive an alert and can investigate the problem.
Thus, you can transform the security benchmarking from the periodic task into the constant security practice.
Each violation of the security benchmark does not represent the same level of risk. For example, a configuration mistake on a development cloud resource may be insignificant, while exposing a production database with sensitive data may be very critical.
Therefore, organizations should combine the benchmarking results with the asset criticality, exposure, exploitability, and business impact. This allows security teams to pay more attention to the most important problems.
Security benchmarks can also help companies to implement and monitor compliance. Companies can correlate benchmark controls with the requirements of frameworks such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and others.
This gives security and compliance teams measurable evidence of control implementation and helps to find gaps before audit or assessment.
Cloud security benchmarks are the most effective when they become part of regular cloud operations. Security verification can be embedded into Infrastructure-as-Code, CI/CD pipeline, cloud infrastructure provisioning workflow, and change management process.
In this case, organizations can find insecure configurations of cloud resources before the deployment.
Cloud security benchmarks are a practical tool to measure and improve cloud security posture. They help organizations to create standards, find security gaps, support compliance, and get measurable security objectives.
As cloud infrastructures continue to evolve, companies need to stop using the periodic security review and start monitoring cloud security baseline continuously. Combining security benchmark with CSPM, automation, and cloud governance can help companies to keep their cloud environment secure and resilient.
At Ancrew Global Services, we assist our customers in creating and checking cloud security baselines with CSPM, cloud security assessment, configuration reviews, compliance assessments, VAPT, and continuous security monitoring. We help businesses to identify security benchmark deviations and gaps and improve their cloud security posture.