Cloud Penetration Testing
Identify security vulnerabilities within your cloud systems and applications with CREST-approved penetration testing.
Best Cyber Security Company 2021
Best Cyber Security Company 2022
What is cloud penetration testing?
As organisations increasingly move data and applications to the cloud, it’s vital to ensure their cyber security efforts don’t stop at the network perimeter. Cloud penetration testing is an authorised security assessment that simulates an attack on a cloud environment to evaluate its defence mechanisms and identify any vulnerabilities. It aims to discover weaknesses in the configuration of cloud services that malicious actors could leverage to compromise data or systems.
Cloud penetration testing can be performed manually or with automated tools. Manual testing is more time consuming and requires more technical expertise, but it can be more thorough. Automated tools can be less expensive and easier to use, but they may not find all potential security issues.
Cloud penetration testing should be conducted regularly to ensure the security of your cloud environment. It’s essential to work with a reputable and experienced company – such as Sentrium – that has the knowledge and tools to conduct these tests properly.
Why does your organisation need a cloud pentest?
By conducting regular cloud penetration tests, your organisation can ensure its cloud data and applications are well-protected against the constantly evolving threat posed by cyber criminals. It provides the information necessary to perform a comprehensive risk assessment of your cloud infrastructure to highlight any configuration weaknesses.
It provides detailed technical insight into the configuration of your cloud environment. In addition, a cloud pentest can help ensure your organisation remains compliant with various industry regulations, such as GDRP, PCI:DSS and other data protection legislation.
As all cloud environments differ, there’s no standard assessment for cloud penetration tests. Instead, our skilled and experienced consultants will work with you to understand your cloud infrastructure and services and determine the best testing to use.
Due to the number of services offered in the cloud, a cloud penetration test can take many forms depending on your organisation’s utilisation of the cloud. As a result, testing may involve evaluating the following:
- Microsoft 365 assessment
- Internal cloud virtual networks
- Externally available services such as web applications and APIs
- Functions as a Service (AWS Lambda / Azure Functions)
- Cloud-based virtual machines and containers
- Cloud-based storage
- User access permissions
Penetration test reporting
To maximise the value gained from a penetration test, it is essential to act upon the vulnerabilities identified during an engagement. Our penetration testing service provides a detailed technical report to assist you in making these important improvements.
Our technical penetration testing reports include:
- A succinct Management Summary with key statistical information
- A Technical Summary covering the most important considerations
- Full technical details of every vulnerability discovered, including the assessed impact
- Clear vulnerability weightings to aid in prioritising remediation
- Detailed and practical guidance for technical remediation of each vulnerability
We understand that technical reports can be difficult to consume, so ours is tailored heavily on feedback from our valued customers. Furthermore, our consultants are always available to discuss questions you may have once you have received the report.
Types of penetration testing
As well as cloud pentests, our team provides the following penetration testing services:
Our network and infrastructure penetration testing investigates your internal and external networks and systems for vulnerabilities and simulates exploitation safely to demonstrate the potential impact. We have extensive knowledge of Windows and Unix environments.
Assesses your web applications and supporting components, such as APIs, for security vulnerabilities that may be exploited to compromise your application data and/or users. We use similar tools and techniques to legitimate threat actors.
Provides an in-depth review of your application’s security to ensure the data it processes is secure. We have vast experience assessing applications across iOS, Android and Windows, and mobile development frameworks such as React Native, Flutter and Xamarin.
Find out more about our full range of penetration testing services, providing a comprehensive portfolio of testing solutions for your IT systems, websites, applications and cloud infrastructure.
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Contact UsWhy choose Sentrium?
Our experienced and CREST-certified penetration testing team ensures we offer the required level of expertise to provide an accurate and comprehensive cloud penetration testing service.
Our consultants will work closely with you to determine the most appropriate testing and clarify any questions you may have.
Our communication-focused client-first approach ensures that our consultants are always on hand to answer any questions you may have. We pride ourselves on establishing and building strong and collaborative long-term relationships with our clients.
Frequently Asked Questions
What will be tested?
Cloud testing scenarios vary widely depending on your organisation’s utilisation of the cloud. As with all assessments, an accurate and detailed scope is vital. Our consultants will work with you to lay down the rules of engagement and will be guided by your requirements to determine the scope and methodology that will work best for you.
How long does a cloud pentest take?
Due to the broad nature of cloud assessments, this can vary based on the number of resources present in the environment and its complexity. As a general guide, authenticated tests are granted access to more resources and may take longer but yield more comprehensive results.
Do I need permission from my cloud provider?
All cloud providers differ in terms of what testing is permitted. Some may restrict some forms of testing that could impact other customers. Our experienced consultants can work through this and help advise you.
Will my services be disrupted?
Our skilled testers follow strict guidelines in accordance with legal and technical standards to ensure minimal disruption to your business while a cloud penetration test is performed. With years of experience testing mission-critical workloads, you can rest easy. Denial of service attacks are generally out of scope when dealing with cloud assessments.
How do I know what type of cloud pentest I need?
The first step of any assessment is to discuss your needs and requirements. Our experienced consultants will work with you to determine your principal security concerns. Once established, we can tailor a testing scenario designed to assess your environment and give you confidence and assurance that your problems are thoroughly evaluated and addressed.
What is CREST?
CREST is an international not-for-profit accreditation and certification body representing and supporting the technical information security market. Companies can become a CREST member and apply for CREST-accredited services. The application requires a rigorous assessment of companies’ processes, data security and service methodologies to ensure they adhere to a best practice standard.
Is Sentrium a CREST-approved provider?
Yes! Sentrium has achieved the standards set by CREST and is a CREST-approved penetration testing service provider. We’re proud to offer services that achieve CREST’s extremely high standards of quality and professionalism, which are recognised internationally.
Why should I use a CREST-approved pentesting company?
Working with a CREST-approved penetration testing provider ensures you’re in safe and experienced hands. You should have the confidence that your penetration test is thorough and comprehensive. Your provider must conduct a technically comprehensive test that will adhere to information security and quality assurance requirements set by CREST.
What happens after a cloud pentest?
Following your cloud penetration test, our team will deliver a comprehensive and detailed report outlining all your environment’s weaknesses. This report is triaged based on the issue severity and the level of risk posed by exploitation. Every weakness contains detailed remediation steps that will allow your teams to quickly and efficiently resolve any issues identified during testing.
Can I speak to anyone about the findings?
Absolutely. Following any assessment, our team will be available for debriefing to go through the issues identified. This is a fantastic opportunity for members of the wider team to pose questions and discuss methods to remediate any problems.
Our clients
Common cloud system vulnerabilities
Our cloud penetration testing services will assess your systems to identify and address a wide range of common cloud vulnerabilities, including:
Microsoft 365 misconfigurations
This assessment is focused on securely configuring your Microsoft 365 platform and ensuring your data and resources are robustly protected and secured. It involves an accurate appraisal of permissions roles, from users to applications. We’ll examine data management and storage policies to ensure that all data remains secure. We’ll also investigate the security configuration of Exchange to ensure it meets security best practices, such as blocking malicious files and phishing attempts.
Insecure configurations of virtual networks
Our consultants will probe for open ports and weak security group rules that may have unintentionally exposed sensitive services and ports. Frequent issues include inadvertently exposed remote administration ports such as SSH or RDP, or where the whitelisting of hosts with access to these ports is too broad.
External/public-facing infrastructure
External-facing cloud infrastructure often contains weaknesses seen in on-premise systems. These include unpatched and outdated software or inadvertently exposed services. Our consultants will scan open ports before probing deeper to pinpoint services and applications running on the hosts and any vulnerabilities they contain. This may involve different assessment types based on the infrastructure involved. For web applications, this may include testing features such as injection attacks or Server-Side Request Forgery. In other cases, this may resemble an external or internal network assessment.
Functions as a Service
Running code in the cloud without maintaining the underlying infrastructure has its advantages. However, the code and its configuration must be secure. Our team will assess functions and review code to check for weaknesses like hardcoded credentials and access keys.
We’ll also examine and analyse permissions granted to functions for any misconfigurations, as they scarcely run in isolation and instead connect to, and impact, several resources.
Virtual machines and containers
Our team will evaluate virtual machines and containers for common vulnerabilities. These include insecure credentials and permissions, networking misconfigurations, lack of encryption, and appropriate backup storage.
Cloud-based storage
Our team will assess your cloud-based storage to identify vulnerabilities like sensitive data exposure and weak encryption. We’ll also look at configuration issues that may be relevant to your organisation’s industry, such as data retention periods.
User access permissions
We’ll review and assess your user access permissions and their scope to determine if they comply with the principle of least privilege. Upon receipt of user permissions, our team will explore how these could be escalated. We’ll also examine if they can be used to grant access to additional or unintended resources.
Get in touch with our experts to discuss your needs
Phone +44(0)1242 388634 or email [email protected]
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