Cloud Security Guide
Comprehensive security best practices for AWS, Azure, and GCP. Protect your cloud infrastructure with proven strategies.
Key Security Services
- IAM — Identity & Access Management with MFA, Roles, SCP
- GuardDuty — Intelligent threat detection
- Security Hub — Centralized security findings
- Inspector — Automated vulnerability assessment
- Macie — Data classification & PII discovery
- KMS — Key Management Service
- CloudTrail — API activity logging & auditing
- WAF & Shield — Web application firewall & DDoS protection
Best Practices
- Enable MFA on all IAM users, especially root
- Use IAM Roles instead of long-lived access keys
- Enable S3 Block Public Access at account level
- Turn on CloudTrail in all regions
- Use VPC with private subnets for databases
- Enable GuardDuty and Security Hub
Key Security Services
- Entra ID — Identity management with Conditional Access
- Defender for Cloud — CSPM and threat protection
- Sentinel — Cloud-native SIEM & SOAR
- Key Vault — Secrets, keys, and certificate management
- Azure Policy — Governance and compliance enforcement
- NSG & Azure Firewall — Network security controls
- DDoS Protection — Standard and advanced tiers
- Privileged Identity Management (PIM) — JIT access
Best Practices
- Enforce Conditional Access with MFA
- Use Managed Identities instead of service principal secrets
- Enable Azure Defender for all resource types
- Deploy Private Endpoints for PaaS services
- Implement Azure Sentinel for threat monitoring
- Use Azure Policy to enforce compliance at scale
Key Security Services
- Cloud IAM — Fine-grained access control with organization policies
- Security Command Center — Security & risk management
- VPC Service Controls — Perimeter security for cloud resources
- Binary Authorization — Deploy-time container security
- Cloud KMS — Key management and HSMs
- Cloud Audit Logs — Admin activity and data access logs
- Workload Identity — Secure GKE pod-to-cloud auth
- Cloud Armor — DDoS, WAF, and bot management
Best Practices
- Use Organization Policies to restrict resource creation
- Implement VPC Service Controls for sensitive data
- Enable Binary Authorization for GKE clusters
- Use Workload Identity instead of service account keys
- Enable Cloud Audit Logs everywhere
- Use Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK)
Real-World Cloud Security Breaches
Learn from major cloud security incidents to prevent similar issues in your organization.
Capital One
Impact: 106M customer records exposed
Root Cause: SSRF vulnerability + over-permissioned IAM role
Lesson: Enforce IMDSv2, least privilege IAM, network segmentation
Toyota
Impact: 2.15M customer vehicle records exposed for 10 years
Root Cause: Cloud storage bucket publicly accessible
Lesson: Automated misconfiguration detection (CSPM), regular audits
Microsoft Power Apps
Impact: 38M records from 47 organizations exposed
Root Cause: Default table permissions set to public access
Lesson: Never trust default configurations; audit all data endpoints
Snowflake Customers
Impact: 560M+ records across 165+ companies
Root Cause: Compromised credentials without MFA (infostealer malware)
Lesson: Enforce MFA on all SaaS platforms; monitor for infostealers
Cloud Security Checklist
Use this checklist to audit your cloud security posture across all providers.
- MFA enforced for all users
- Service accounts use least privilege
- Access keys rotated every 90 days
- Privileged access is time-bounded (JIT/PIM)
- Service account keys are avoided (use roles/managed identities)
- Default deny network policies
- Private subnets for sensitive workloads
- VPN/PrivateLink for management access
- DDoS protection enabled
- WAF deployed for web applications
- Encryption at rest enabled (all storage)
- TLS 1.2+ enforced for data in transit
- Backup and disaster recovery tested
- Data classification applied
- Key management with regular rotation
- Cloud audit logs enabled in all regions
- Alerting on suspicious activity
- SIEM/SOAR deployed and configured
- Regular penetration testing
- Compliance scanning automated (CSPM)