Do cloud providers allow penetration testing on their platforms?

AWS, Azure, and GCP all permit penetration testing of your own resources without prior approval for most service types. We are familiar with each provider's acceptable use policies and will guide you through any notification requirements specific to your environment.

What does a cloud penetration test actually cover?

We test IAM permission boundaries, public S3/Blob Storage exposure, metadata service abuse (SSRF to IMDS), misconfigured security groups, over-privileged service accounts, and cross-account trust relationships. The goal is to demonstrate what an attacker could access from an initial foothold.

We already have a cloud security assessment — why do we also need a pen test?

A security assessment identifies misconfiguration findings from a configuration review perspective. A penetration test actively chains those misconfigurations together into real attack paths to prove exploitability and business impact, which is what boards and auditors increasingly require.

Can you test a multi-cloud environment spanning AWS and Azure?

Yes. We test multi-cloud and hybrid environments, including cross-cloud trust relationships and federated identity configurations. Our team holds AWS Security Specialty and Azure Security Engineer certifications.

Will cloud pen testing generate billable usage or unexpected costs?

Minimal. Our techniques are designed to stay within your existing resource footprint. We do not spin up compute resources or generate significant egress traffic. Any test resources created are documented and cleaned up at the end of the engagement.

AWS • Azure • GCP

Cloud Penetration Testing

Assessment of AWS, Azure, and GCP environments to identify IAM misconfigurations, data exposure, and cloud-specific vulnerabilities.

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Coverage

Cloud Security Testing Areas

Multi-cloud security expertise

AWS Security

Testing of IAM policies, S3 buckets, EC2 instances, Lambda functions, and AWS-specific attack vectors

Azure Security

Azure AD, Key Vault, Storage Accounts, Azure Functions, and Microsoft cloud configurations

GCP Security

Google Cloud IAM, Cloud Storage, Compute Engine, and GCP-specific security testing

IAM Analysis

Identity and access management policy review, privilege escalation paths, and role misconfigurations

Data Exposure

Testing for exposed storage buckets, databases, and sensitive configuration data

Infrastructure

Virtual machine security, container configurations, and network segmentation testing

Process

Cloud Testing Methodology

Systematic approach to cloud security assessment

Discovery

Enumerate cloud resources, services, and external exposure

IAM Review

Analyze identity policies, roles, and permission boundaries

Configuration

Review service configurations against CIS benchmarks

Exploitation

Attempt privilege escalation and lateral movement

Data Access

Test for unauthorized data access and exfiltration paths

Reporting

Cloud-specific findings with remediation guidance

Deliverables

What You Receive

Cloud infrastructure security assessment
IAM policy analysis and recommendations
CIS benchmark compliance report
Privilege escalation path documentation
Data exposure risk assessment
Cloud security architecture recommendations

How it works

What a Cloud Penetration Test Looks Like

Configuration review and live exploitation across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud

Scoping by account, subscription, or project

Cloud tests are scoped on the accounts, subscriptions, or projects in play, the workloads inside them (compute, containers, serverless, managed databases), and the identity model connecting them. We agree whether the test is external-only, assumed-breach from a low-privilege identity, or both. Assumed-breach is where most real findings come from and is our default recommendation.

Typical effort: 5 to 10 testing days for a single production account or subscription with a handful of workloads; multi-account organisations are phased.
Access we need: a read-only auditor role for configuration review plus one deliberately low-privilege identity for the assumed-breach path, and provider-specific authorisation where required.
Provider rules: we work within AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud penetration-testing policies, so no denial-of-service and no testing of provider-owned infrastructure.

Configuration review first, then exploitation

We pull the full configuration of the environment and review it against provider benchmarks and our own attack-path knowledge. Then we prove which misconfigurations matter by exploiting them: escalating from the low-privilege identity, reaching data stores that should have been isolated, and pivoting between services through trust relationships and metadata endpoints.

Reporting as attack paths, not a list of settings

The report presents findings as chains: the starting point, each step taken, the control that failed, and the data or privilege reached. Every step carries the exact API call or command, so your cloud team can reproduce and fix at the policy, role, or network layer. Configuration findings that were not exploitable are listed separately as hardening items.

Retest and evidence for assurance

Critical and high findings are retested within 30 days at no cost. The final pack maps findings to the CIS benchmark and to the shared-responsibility boundary so it can be reused in customer and auditor conversations.

Coverage

Vulnerability Classes We Test For

The misconfigurations that turn a cloud account into a breach

Identity and access management

Over-privileged users, roles, and service principals; privilege-escalation paths through policy attachment, role assumption, and managed-identity abuse; unused credentials and access keys; missing multi-factor enforcement; and cross-account or cross-tenant trust that is broader than intended.

Storage and data services

Public or cross-account object storage, database instances reachable from the internet, snapshots and backups shared too widely, secrets stored in environment variables and parameter stores without access control, and encryption settings that exist on paper but not on the resource.

Network and compute

Security groups and network security groups open to the world, missing segmentation between environments, instance metadata service abuse, exposed management ports, and serverless functions or containers running with more permissions than their code needs.

Kubernetes and container platforms

Cluster API exposure, role-based access control gaps, privileged pods and host mounts, secrets in manifests, image provenance, and the path from a compromised pod to the cloud account through node identities.

Logging, monitoring, and response readiness

Whether the actions we took during the test were logged, alerted on, and attributable. A cloud test that nobody noticed is itself a finding, and we report it as one.

Compliance

Standards and Compliance Mapping

Frameworks the test is mapped to

Every finding is tagged to the control it evidences, so the report drops straight into an audit pack instead of needing a second translation exercise. For cloud engagements the mappings we deliver by default are:

PCI DSS v4.0 Requirement 11.4: external and internal penetration testing on a defined methodology, with retest evidence for exploitable findings.
ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A 8.8 (management of technical vulnerabilities) and A 8.29 (security testing in development and acceptance).
SOC 2 Common Criteria CC7.1 and CC4.1: vulnerability identification and independent evaluation of control effectiveness.
OWASP Web Security Testing Guide, OWASP ASVS, and PTES as the underlying methodology references cited in the report.
Regulatory expectations for reasonable security safeguards, including data-protection regimes such as the GDPR and India's DPDP Act, where the application handles personal data.

What auditors receive

The report includes a methodology statement, tester attestation, scope and exclusions, a findings register with CVSS v3.1 scores, evidence for each finding, and a signed retest letter once fixes are verified. Customers use the same pack for customer security questionnaires, cyber-insurance renewals, and procurement due diligence.

Provider benchmarks

Findings are additionally referenced to the CIS Foundations Benchmarks for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud and, where relevant, the CIS Kubernetes Benchmark, so hardening work can be tracked against a recognised baseline.

Further reading: Cloud penetration testing across AWS, Azure, and GCP · How to audit AWS IAM: a practical walkthrough · Kubernetes security hardening

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