Importance of Penetration Testing in Cloud Infrastructures

Importance of Penetration Testing in Cloud Infrastructures

• Every day more and more organizations are switching to cloud infrastructure. The reason is the amazing data handling and mobility freedom that cloud service providers offer.
• Businesses store their critical data and valuable digital assets in the cloud. This makes the cloud infrastructure a luscious target for hackers.
• Cloud Pentesting helps to find out vulnerabilities within the cloud that might serve as a gateway for cyber-attacks.
• Frequent penetration testing on clouds will assist you in keeping your data on the cloud safe and secure.

How Cloud Pentesting is Different from Traditional Penetration Testing?

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.

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

The Factors that Support the Importance of Cloud Penetration Testing

Risk Assessment

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.

Regulation and Compliance

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.

Reputation

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.

Competition and Rivalry

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.

Before You Go!

• As clouds are an indifferentiable part of all the industries now. It is obvious that malicious activities will be targeted toward them.
• Cloud pen testing holds multi-dimensional importance for your cloud infrastructure along with ensuring security.
• There are various Cyber Security Companies in Dubai, but RSK comes with relevant expertise and experience.