Moving to the cloud often means bringing security mistakes along. These patterns cause the majority of cloud security incidents.
Overly Permissive IAM
When something doesn’t work, adding permissions is easier than debugging. Eventually, service accounts have administrator access to everything. One compromised credential exposes the entire account.
Apply least privilege seriously. Start with no permissions and add only what’s needed. Review permissions regularly and remove what’s unused.
Public S3 Buckets
The defaults have improved, but misconfigured buckets still leak sensitive data regularly. Block public access at the account level unless you have a specific, documented need for public buckets.
Unencrypted Data
Enable encryption by default for everything. S3 buckets, EBS volumes, RDS databases, secrets managers. The performance overhead is negligible. The compliance benefit is significant.
Missing Network Segmentation
Flat networks let attackers move laterally after initial compromise. Segment by function and sensitivity. Your production database shouldn’t be reachable from your development VPC.
Neglected Security Groups
Security groups accumulate rules over time. That temporary SSH access you added for debugging? Still there six months later, open to the internet.
Audit security groups regularly. Remove rules you can’t explain. Restrict sources to the minimum necessary ranges.
Credential Management
Secrets in environment variables, committed to Git, hardcoded in configuration files – all common, all dangerous. Use secrets managers. Rotate credentials automatically.
Missing Logging
Without logs, you can’t detect breaches or investigate incidents. Enable CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, and S3 access logging. Store logs in a separate, restricted account.
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