Offensive Security · Cloud Security Assessment Service dossier · 01/12

Cloud Security Assessment

Your cloud is rarely breached because the provider failed — it's breached because something was left exposed. We assess AWS, Azure and GCP the way an attacker would: reviewing your configuration against the benchmarks, then proving which misconfigurations actually lead to compromise.

Veteran researchers. CERT-In empaneled. We go beyond the posture scan.

Discipline
Offensive Security · Cloud
Coverage
AWS · Azure · GCP
Baseline
CIS Foundations Benchmarks
Retest
Remediation retest included
Credential
CERT-In Empaneled
02

The breach is almost always a misconfiguration

The cloud changed where the risk lives.

The provider hardens the data centres, the hypervisor and the managed services beneath your workloads — and does it well. What remains is everything you build on top: who can assume which role, which bucket is public, where a secret was committed, which security group is open to the world, and whether anyone is watching the logs. That layer is yours to secure, and it is where almost every cloud incident actually begins.

Most cloud testing stops at a posture scan — a tool reads your configuration, compares it to a benchmark, and produces a list of deviations. That list is useful, but it is not an assessment. A scanner cannot tell you that an over-permissive role can be chained into account-wide control, that a readable bucket leaks the credentials to a second account, or that a forgotten function exposes the keys to everything else. Real attackers reason across those relationships. Our assessments are built around that reality: a rigorous configuration review for breadth, and experienced researchers for the depth, judgment and proof that mirror an adversary.

"A scan tells you what's misconfigured. We tell you what an attacker could actually do with it."
03

Where the provider's job ends and yours begins

Every major cloud runs on a shared responsibility model.

AWS, Azure and Google Cloud are responsible for the security of the cloud — the physical infrastructure, the network fabric and the managed services. You are responsible for security in the cloud — your identities and permissions, your data, your network rules, your keys and your monitoring. The exact line shifts as you move from raw compute toward managed and serverless services, but the principle holds: the configuration choices are yours, and so is the exposure they create. Our assessment lives entirely on your side of that line, where the risk you control actually sits.

Provider

Secured by your provider

  • Data centres
  • Hardware
  • Hypervisor
  • Managed-service internals
Assessed by Intect

Secured by you — and assessed by us

  • IAM & permissions
  • Data & storage
  • Network & security groups
  • Keys & secrets
  • Logging & monitoring
  • Workload config
04

What an attacker is really after

Every finding we report ladders up to a real adversarial goal. We test for the outcomes attackers pursue in the cloud, not just isolated misconfigurations.

01

Escalating privilege

Turning a narrow permission or an over-broad role into administrative control of the account or subscription.

02

Exposing data

Reaching storage, databases and snapshots that were never meant to be reachable — public buckets, open blobs, readable disks.

03

Harvesting secrets

Recovering access keys, tokens and credentials from code, metadata, environment variables or unencrypted stores.

04

Moving laterally

Pivoting between roles, accounts, subscriptions and projects through trust relationships that were never meant to connect.

05

Living unseen

Operating where logging is disabled, incomplete or unmonitored, so the intrusion is never reconstructed.

06

Abusing the workload

Exploiting a misconfigured container, Kubernetes cluster or serverless function to break out of its intended boundary.

05

A disciplined, attacker-led methodology

We follow a structured methodology so coverage is repeatable and defensible, while the exploitation itself stays creative and adversarial. We begin with a security audit of the environment and a configuration review benchmarked against the CIS Foundations Benchmarks and each provider's own security guidance, then move outward through the communication channels, the APIs and the workloads — combining automated discovery with the manual testing that proves real impact.

01 AUDIT 02 CONFIG REVIEW 03 COMMS 04 APIs 05 MANUAL Identity & Access Management Encryption Backup & resilience Key Management Scanning Log Analysis Continuous Monitoring
FIG. 01Methodology flow — 5-stage pipeline fanning out into 7 manual-testing domains
STAGE 01 Security Audit of the Cloud Environment Establish scope and a complete inventory: accounts, subscriptions and projects, identities, regions, and the assets in play (compute, storage, databases, networks, containers, serverless).
STAGE 02 Configuration Review of the Cloud Infrastructure Measure the environment against the CIS Benchmarks and provider best practice — IAM, network, storage, encryption and logging — to surface every deviation.
STAGE 03 Testing the Communication Channel Examine how services, networks and endpoints talk to each other and to the outside world: exposure, segmentation, transport security and trust.
STAGE 04 Testing APIs and Microservices Probe the application and service interfaces that front the workload for authentication, authorization and input-handling weaknesses.
STAGE 05 Manual Methods of Testing Researchers go beyond the scan, validating and chaining findings by hand across the domains that decide real impact.
Manual methods fan out across Identity & Access Management Encryption Backup & resilience Key Management Scanning Log Analysis Continuous Monitoring
06

A scan reads the config. We prove the consequence.

Both matter. We do the configuration review thoroughly — and then we do the part a tool cannot.

Configuration review — breadth

Breadth, against the benchmark

We assess your environment against the CIS Foundations Benchmarks and each provider's security best practice — IAM policy, storage exposure, network rules, encryption and logging coverage. This gives you a complete, prioritized picture of where the configuration deviates from a hardened baseline. Every finding is triaged by an analyst, not left as raw tool output.

Exploitation & attack-path analysis — depth

Depth, with judgment

The findings that matter most are the ones that connect. Our researchers reason across the environment the way an attacker does — chaining an over-permissive role, a readable bucket and an exposed secret into a realistic path to compromise — and safely prove what that path actually reaches. This is the work no posture scanner is built to do.

07

What we assess

Our coverage is benchmarked against the CIS Foundations Benchmarks for AWS, Azure and GCP and each provider's own security best practice. Across an engagement we systematically examine the following domains:

01 Identity & Access Management Over-permissive policies and roles, privilege-escalation paths, unused and stale credentials, weak or missing MFA, federation and SSO trust, and the assume-role / impersonation relationships that let access spread.
IAMMFASSO / Federation
02 Data & Storage Exposure Publicly accessible object storage (S3, Azure Blob, GCS), open databases and snapshots, and sensitive data reachable through responses, metadata or misapplied access policies.
S3Azure BlobGCS
03 Network & Perimeter Over-broad security groups, network security groups and firewall rules, exposed management ports and services, segmentation gaps, and weakly protected service endpoints.
Security GroupsNSGsFirewall Rules
04 Encryption & Key Management Encryption at rest and in transit, key generation, rotation and access control, and the handling of secrets across code, pipelines and key/secret stores (KMS, Key Vault, Cloud KMS / Secrets Manager).
KMSKey VaultCloud KMS / Secrets Manager
05 Logging & Monitoring Coverage and integrity of audit logging (CloudTrail, Azure Monitor / Activity Log, Cloud Audit Logs), detection gaps, and whether an attacker could operate without being recorded.
CloudTrailAzure MonitorCloud Audit Logs
06 Workload & Container Security Container, Kubernetes and serverless configuration: image and registry hygiene, RBAC and pod-security settings, exposed control planes, function permissions and runtime exposure.
KubernetesServerlessRBAC
07 IaC & DevSecOps Security of infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, and configuration management such as Ansible, Chef and Puppet) and the pipeline that deploys it — so a misconfiguration is caught before it ships, not after.
TerraformAnsible · Chef · Puppet
08

How an engagement works

A clear path from scoping to a posture your team can keep — designed to give you findings you can act on immediately and a plan for what comes next.

01
Prepare the scope
We agree the accounts, subscriptions, projects and assets in scope, confirm provider testing rules, and define the rules of engagement before any testing begins.
02
Review and analyse
We build a working model of the environment and review its configuration against the CIS Benchmarks and provider best practice — identity, network, storage, encryption and logging.
03
Assess and measure
We validate findings by hand and pursue the attack paths a scan cannot see — chaining misconfigurations to prove real, demonstrable impact, safely.
04
Advice and guidance
We translate findings into clear, prioritized remediation guidance written for the engineers who will fix them, not generic checklist advice.
05
Roadmap
We sequence the work by risk, effort and cost into a roadmap that moves you toward a hardened, benchmark-aligned posture.
06
Monitor
We help you close the visibility gaps — logging, detection and alerting — so the next deviation is caught when it happens.
07
Continuous improvement
Cloud estates change daily. We support a recurring cadence so your security posture keeps pace with what you ship.
09

Engagements we run

The same attacker mindset applies whether you need a single configuration review or a full architectural risk analysis.

Cloud Configuration Review A rigorous review of your AWS, Azure or GCP configuration against the CIS Benchmarks and provider best practice, with prioritized remediation.
Cloud Architectural Risk Analysis A deeper look at how your environment is designed — trust boundaries, account structure, network architecture — to find the risks that live in the architecture itself.
Cloud Security Maturity Action Plan An assessment of where your cloud security program stands today and a sequenced plan to mature it.
Cloud Security Blueprints Reference designs and hardened baselines so new workloads are built secure by default.
Cloud Application Security (SAST) Static analysis of the application and infrastructure-as-code that defines and runs in your cloud, surfacing flaws before they reach production.
10

What you receive

Every engagement ends in a report your team can act on — written for both the engineers who will remediate and the leaders who must understand the risk.

01

Executive summary

Cloud risk posture and business impact in plain language for leadership.

02

Detailed findings

Each issue with severity, affected resources, reproducible evidence, and — where in scope — the demonstrated attack path.

03

Remediation guidance

Specific, prioritized fixes mapped to the affected service and configuration, not generic advice.

04

Standards mapping

Findings mapped to the relevant CIS Benchmark controls and provider best-practice guidance.

05

Remediation retest

We re-verify fixes so you can confirm the risk is genuinely closed.

06

Direct researcher access

A debrief with the people who did the testing, not a handoff to a call centre.

CERT-In Empaneled CIS Benchmarks (AWS · Azure · GCP) Provider security best practice

Supports ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI-DSS and RBI/SEBI assessment requirements

11

Frequently asked questions

How is this different from a posture (CSPM) scan?

A posture scan compares your configuration to a benchmark and lists the deviations — useful, but it stops there. It does not test whether a deviation is actually exploitable, it does not chain findings into a realistic attack path, and it cannot reason about the trust relationships unique to your environment. We do the configuration review and the manual, attacker-led work that proves which of those findings genuinely lead to compromise.

Which clouds do you cover?

AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, including multi-cloud and hybrid estates, and the container, Kubernetes and serverless workloads running on them.

Will testing affect our production environment?

We scope and pace engagements to avoid operational impact, work within each provider's testing and acceptable-use rules, and treat any potentially intrusive testing with explicit agreement. Much of a cloud assessment is read-only configuration review; exploitation is performed safely and with your sign-off.

Do we need anything from our cloud provider before you test?

For most assessment activity, no. We work within AWS, Azure and GCP testing policies, and we will confirm during scoping whether any activity requires prior notification to the provider. We will never test outside the agreed scope.

How often should we assess our cloud?

At minimum annually, and after any significant change to your account structure, identity model or architecture. Because cloud estates change continuously, most organizations benefit from a recurring cadence combined with ongoing monitoring.

Do you retest after we fix the issues?

Yes. Remediation retesting is included so you can confirm each finding is genuinely resolved.

12

Find it before they do.

The same attacker mindset extends across the rest of your estate — and the compliance frameworks your cloud posture has to support.

Offensive Security · Cloud Security Assessment

Find it before they do.

Tell us what you run in the cloud and we'll scope an assessment that fits — or connect you directly with a researcher.