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Penetration Testing

Cloud Penetration Testing

Cloud infrastructure is powerful — and notoriously easy to misconfigure. An overly permissive IAM role or a public S3 bucket is all an attacker needs to access your entire environment. We find these before they do.

IAM Role AdministratorAccess OVERPERM S3 Bucket — PUBLIC s3://corp-backups-prod PUBLICLY EXPOSED EC2 Instance 172.31.x.x SSH open :22 Lambda Fn process-data env vars leaked CIS AWS Benchmark Score 56% 47 passing · 37 failing · 12 not applicable
OSOSCP
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ISO27001ISO 27001
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OSOSCP
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About This Service

What is Cloud Penetration Testing?

Security assessment of your cloud infrastructure — testing AWS, Azure, and GCP environments for misconfigurations, overly permissive IAM policies, exposed storage, and exploitable attack paths.

Cloud environments are elastic, complex, and frequently misconfigured. Overly permissive IAM roles, public storage buckets, and default credentials are behind a significant share of major cloud incidents — and most organisations have at least one of these risks present without knowing it.

What You Gain

Framework / Methodology

CIS Cloud Benchmarks, CSA STAR, NIST SP 800-144

Typical Timeline: 5–10 days depending on cloud footprint

Report: Executive summary + full technical findings

Retest: Complimentary, included in every engagement

NDA: Signed before any technical discussion

Deliverables

What You Receive

Executive Summary Report

Cloud security risk overview for leadership and DevOps teams

Full Technical Report

All findings with affected resource identifiers, proof-of-concept, and CVSS scores

IAM Review

Detailed analysis of identity and access management policies with privilege escalation paths highlighted

CIS Benchmark Gap Analysis

Your cloud environment measured against CIS Benchmarks for AWS/Azure/GCP with pass/fail per control

Remediation Guide

Cloud-provider-specific fix instructions including CLI commands and console steps

Retest Report

Confirms critical and high findings resolved after remediation

Scope

What We Test

IAM policies — overly permissive roles, privilege escalation paths

Storage bucket and blob exposure (S3, Azure Blob, GCS)

Network security groups, firewall rules, and exposed services

Secrets management — hardcoded credentials, exposed keys

Container and Kubernetes security (EKS, AKS, GKE)

Serverless function security (Lambda, Azure Functions)

Cloud metadata service abuse (IMDS attacks)

Cross-account and cross-tenant access issues

Logging, monitoring, and detection gaps

Compliance against CIS Cloud Benchmarks

Process

How We Run This Engagement

Every engagement follows a defined, transparent process — no surprises, no hidden scope changes, and no invoice for work you did not agree to.

1

Scoping

Document cloud accounts, regions, services in scope, and access levels for testing.

2

Reconnaissance

Map exposed cloud assets and enumerate IAM permissions.

3

Configuration Review

Assess IAM policies, network rules, storage permissions, and security settings against CIS Benchmarks.

4

Exploitation

Attempt to exploit identified misconfigurations to demonstrate real-world impact.

5

Lateral Movement

Assess attacker movement potential within the cloud environment.

6

Reporting & Retest

Risk-rated findings with AWS/Azure/GCP-specific remediation guidance, followed by complimentary retest.

Why Us

Why Work With Vigilant Defenders

Manual Testing. Not Scanner Output.

Automated tools find known signatures. Our certified consultants find the chained attack paths, logic flaws, and context-specific vulnerabilities that no scanner will surface. Every finding we report is manually verified — zero false positives.

Reports Built for Action, Not Filing.

Every finding includes a proof-of-concept, a CVSS risk score, the affected system or endpoint, and step-by-step remediation guidance written for the team that has to fix it. Your developers and your board both get a report they can use.

Confidentiality From Day One.

We sign a formal NDA before any technical discussion begins. Your vulnerabilities, your architecture, and your engagement findings are treated with the same confidentiality as attorney-client communications. We have never disclosed client information.

We Stay Until It's Fixed.

Every engagement includes a complimentary retest once your team has addressed the findings. We verify that the vulnerabilities are genuinely closed — not surface-patched — and issue a formal retest certificate you can share with clients and auditors.

We Test Cloud the Way Cloud Gets Compromised.

Cloud breaches rarely involve sophisticated exploits. They involve misconfigured storage, excessive IAM permissions, and exposed credentials. We focus our testing on the real-world attack paths that have caused the most significant cloud incidents, aligned to CIS Benchmarks for AWS, Azure, and GCP.

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Systematic identification across your entire infrastructure.

FAQ

Cloud Penetration Testing — Frequently Asked Questions

Which cloud platforms do you test?

We test Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). We can also assess multi-cloud environments.

For a configuration review, we typically need read-only access. For penetration testing, we work from a defined starting permission level agreed during scoping — often equivalent to a compromised developer account.

The most frequent findings are overly permissive IAM roles, publicly exposed storage buckets, hardcoded credentials in code repositories, and missing logging configurations.

Yes. Container and Kubernetes security is part of our cloud testing scope — including pod security policies, RBAC configurations, and exposed container management interfaces.

Find Out What's Exposed in Your Cloud Environment

Get a free scoping consultation — no commitment required. We’ll scope the right cloud penetration testing engagement for your environment and send a fixed-fee proposal within 24 hours.