What Is The Need For Aws Penetration Testing?

By Author: Kedar Naik
Total Articles: 8
Comment this article

Performing AWS Penetration Testing for the security assessment for Amazon Web Service environments requires a different perspective as compared to other pen-testing services. Before we delve into its various aspects, we must understand the AWS cloud.

Understanding AWS Cloud

The Amazon Web Services or AWS offers over 90 various cloud hosting services. These services include compute and storage, security management, network infrastructure, content delivery, and physical hosting facility for tenant organizations. Divided into three primary categories, including Infrastructure (IaaS), Platform (PaaS), or Software as a service (SaaS), they are used for various purposes. The most common ones are networking, web application services, networking, and coding.

Using cloud services enable individuals or companies to scale web service needs on a reliable platform, efficiently and instantly. Even though the AWS platform that you build your environment upon cannot be pen-tested, the configuration of the AWS platform done by the organization and its additional application code can be tested.

Why is there a need ...
... to pentest AWS Cloud

As mentioned earlier, AWS services serve various purposes. Sometimes to store data, perform numerous business operations, deliver content, etc. Hosting these functions means there is a risk of a data breach if there is any flaw or misconfiguration. If your cloud-based domain is not secure, hackers have enough ways to override security and create a severe data leak. The recent AWS breaches have revealed several vulnerabilities, such as leaky S3 buckets, many misconfigurations, and compromised AWS environments.

You must note that the techniques used to assess the vulnerabilities for a potential attack are specific to AWS Cloud. They require a different perspective and approach.

Pen-testing AWS matters

The growing popularity and adoption of AWS services across corporations have enhanced the complexities of enterprise environments. This demand has increased the security risk to an equally large extent. Thus, challenge existing AWS security measures has become extremely important to identify all possible vulnerabilities and flaws in the security infrastructure.

Not just to identify the security weaknesses of the cloud services, performing timely AWS pen-tests is a useful way to help your company meet and maintain compliance with government policies and industry best practices such as SOC2, ISO 27001, NIS, PCI-DSS, etc.
But, you need to be sure of the types of security assessments required and if the ones you are conducting, are comprehensive and well-executed. The AWS security implementation must be a part of your organization's complete security plan. Being a part of the shared responsibility model, AWS understands why organizations need to pen-test the apps, instances, and operating systems. Thus, it already has an established program to allow penetration testing. However, when choosing a penetration testing provider, make sure they are familiar with this program and its rules and regulations to ensure it is a success.

Three Main Types of AWS Pen-testing

A thorough security assessment is an ideal way to estimate the security of your AWS environment. Here are three primary types of testing methods:
Testing on the Cloud refers to a traditional testing system hosted within a cloud environment. For example, a virtualized system that has been moved from on-premise to the Cloud.

The second type of testing is Testing in the Cloud. It refers to testing the systems hosted on the Cloud, not exposed publicly. For example, the server hosting an application, where a firewall prevents direct access and are therefore entered through a bastion host.

Testing the Cloud Console or Portal is the third type of testing method. It includes looking at the accounts of various users, their permissions, and the configured access-control lists, among others.

These types of pen-tests must be performed for the organizations to have a clear idea of the level of risk of their systems and cloud environment. Also, they can gauge if they need to perform any urgent remedial actions.

AWS environments are often extremely complex, and guarding data in the Cloud is not easy. Penetration testing is imperative to ensure compliance and reduce your attack footprint. However, before you spend time, money, and resources to conduct an AWS Pen-test, make sure you have a complete understanding of all the factors that these tests involve.