The emergence of the cloud computing technology has entirely changed the way companies conduct business, store information, and provide services. However, as new technology gains more and more ground, there is a greater target area of intercepted cloud-related systems to exploitable public-facing systems. Organizations in the modern time are experiencing advanced cyber threats that take advantage of vulnerabilities both in cloud infrastructure and network perimeters. To secure these layers of attack, companies should invest in cloud penetration testing and external network penetration testing. Combined, these tests provide a full view of your organization’s security posture, exposing vulnerabilities in both the hosted and on-premise environments to malicious actors by the time they can use the vulnerability.
Cloud Penetration Testing.
Cloud penetration testing is a hybrid cyberattack on your cloud system aimed at vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and weaknesses within access control. It is also unlike the traditional IT testing by targeting virtualized settings like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, using provider-specific rules of engagement.
An average cloud pen test will include:
- Identity and Access Management (IAM): This is to provide users with the least necessary privileges.
- Cloud Storage Security: Identifying unprotected S3 buckets, Blob containers, or erroneous permissions.
- API & Application Testing: Determining insecure endpoints and input validation defects.
- Encryption and Key Management: It means that sensitive data is appropriately encrypted both in transit and rest.
- Network Segmentation: Authentication of the workloads by isolating them to ensure they do not move across the network.
This test plays a significant role in avoiding breaches of the cloud either due to human error or poorly configured infrastructure or even neglected security vulnerabilities.
External Network Penetration Testing
external network penetration testing is concerned with the hosting environments, external network penetration testing looks at the perimeter of your organization the public-facing systems that have connections to the internet. These are routers, firewalls, email servers and VPNs. Ethical hackers are those who pretend on what external attackers will do to intrude in your systems.
Key areas evaluated:
- Firewall and Router settings: Identifying misconfigurations or port openings.
- Web and Mail Servers: Determining the use of old software or flawed SSL settings.
- DNS and IP Exposure: Determining whether there are weaknesses in spoofing and domain hijacking.
- Cloud Gateways: The evaluation of the security of hybrid network between cloud and on-premise networks.
- Third-Party Integrations: Revisiting external service connections by identifying weaknesses.
Such tests show the appearance of your digital perimeter to the external environment and its visibility and exploitability.
Why Combine Both Tests?
The contemporary organizations are functioning within hybrid ecosystems that is, their on-premises systems and cloud services are linked to each other. A hacker who uses a vulnerable external endpoint can pivot either to your cloud data or the opposite.
For example:
- Exposed API credentials of a cloud application could be to a susceptible web server (external network vulnerability)
- An incorrectly set up cloud account may spill over access tokens that result in network level intrusions
When cloud penetration testing is conducted together with external network penetration testing, organizations gain visibility of their entire attack surface which includes network perimeter and data storage.
Key Benefits of Dual Testing
- Holistic Risk cover: Find vulnerabilities on local and hosted environments
- Regulatory Compliance: Compliant with ISO 27001, GDPR, PCI DSS, and SOC 2
- Improved Business Continuity: Eliminate downtime that occurs as a result of DDoS or ransomware attacks
- Better Data security: Reliable transmission of data between cloud and network layers
- Informed Decision-Making: Informed use of resources through use of detailed reports
These two opportunities lead to the creation of focused, cost-effective cybersecurity policies by the leadership teams.
Best Practice to be Implemented.
- Test Periodically: Conduct the two tests at least once every year or following significant infrastructure modifications.
- Resort to Certified Experts: Cooperate with testers with OSCP or CEH or CREST certification.
- Define Clear Scope: Incorporate all public-facing systems, APIs and cloud assets.
- Implement Findings into Dev SecOps: Act on findings to improve CI/CD pipelines and security automation.
- Fix-Vulnerability Tests: Confirm that the vulnerabilities have been fixed.
This will help to make sure that testing is moving in the same direction as your systems and threats.
Conclusion
To ensure your digital infrastructure, you need to be able to see all access points within the infrastructure, both internal and external and virtual. Cloud penetration testing secures the workloads and data hosted in the clouds, whereas external network penetration testing secures the perimeter against unauthorized access. Coupled with them, they come up with a stratified, dynamic protection plan that enables organizations to be confident as they innovate in an interconnected world.
