Advanced Cloud Security Assessment for Modern Environments
A Cloud Security Assessment is a comprehensive review of your cloud environment that is aimed at identifying weaknesses, poor configurations, and gaps in policy that may result in security incidents. As businesses continue to shift workloads to AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other environments, securing these environments is essential. A well done assessment makes sure that the set up of your cloud is robust, properly governed, and aligned with industry standard security frameworks. Through a structured analysis, organisations have full visibility of their cloud assets, risks and compliance posture.
Important of a Cloud Security Assessment
A cloud security assessment will ensure you have your cloud environment set up in a secure manner, constantly monitored, and in line with the best practices within the industry. It's all about understanding how things work and how data flows, and where you can get access, and what weaknesses there might be that could lead to a breach. Key purposes include:
Identifying misconfigurations, open ports, weak permissions and policy gaps.
Reducing business risks with early warning of vulnerabilities.
Securing security controls across multi cloud environments.
Ensuring compliance to ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI DSS, GDPR and other regulation.
Identifying risks by continuous assessment.
Improving the resilience to data breaches, privilege escalations and unauthorised access.
Cloud Security Evaluation Procedure
A full assessment of the posture is systematic:
Discovery & Asset Mapping
Identify all cloud resources, services, permissions, network paths and configurations.
Configuration Review
Analyse service setups, access permissions, infrastructure components & baseline adherence.
Vulnerability & Misconfigurations Analysis
Detect out-of-date systems, disabled services, vulnerable populations, over-privileged user accounts, and unsecured HPs.
Cloud Security Risk Assessment
Evaluate threats by severity, exploitability and compliance impact, as well as business sensitivity.
Reporting & Recommendations
Provide an easy‑to‑understand report covering confirmed vulnerabilities, risk ratings, impact assessment, compliance gaps, and clear remediation steps.
Remediation Support & Re-testing
Help with the teams to correct problems identified and then to re-validate better posture.
How do you run a Cloud Security Assessment?
Define What You're Assessing
- List your cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Map out resources—VMs, storage, databases, containers, IAM roles, networks
- Know your compliance requirements (ISO, SOC, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI)
Review Configurations & Policies
- Double-check storage permissions
- Audit security groups and firewall settings
- Make sure encryption is on, both in transit and at rest
- Look at backup policies.
Check Identity & Access
- Stick to least-privilege access
- Watch out for overly broad IAM roles
- Make sure admins use MFA
- Check that role-based access control (RBAC) is in place
Logging, Monitoring & Alerts
- Confirm logging is active (CloudTrail, activity logs)
- Review SIEM integrations
- Test alerts for key security events
Vulnerability Assessment & Pen Testing
- Scan workloads, VMs, containers, and APIs for vulnerabilities
- Test for misconfigurations, privilege escalation, and exposed endpoints
Data Protection
- Check if encryption keys (KMS) are set up right
- Review data classification and who can get to what
- Make sure there are no public buckets or open databases
Compliance & Governance
- Map your controls to frameworks—SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, NIST CSF
- Spot compliance gaps
- Plan fixes
Report & Remediate
- Rank risks by impact
- Give clear, doable steps to close the gaps
- Re-test once fixes are in
Cloud Security Assessment Checklist
Identity & Access
- MFA for all admins
- No root/admin key use
- No overly broad permissions
- Least privilege everywhere
Storage & Databases
- No public buckets or blobs
- Encryption always on
- Backups are set
- Access logs enabled
Network Security
- Security groups locked down
- No open ports to the world
- VPN or Zero Trust in place
- WAF on for apps
Compute & Workloads
- Systems patched and up to date
- Vulnerability scanning running
- IAM roles tight
Benefits of a Cloud Security Assessment
1. Prevent Data Breaches
Most cloud breaches come from misconfigurations such as open S3 buckets, weak IAM policies or insecure APIs. Assessments help to identify and fix these problems before they can be exploited by attackers.
2. Strengthen Compliance
Cloud environments have to comply with security and privacy regulations. A Cloud Security Assessment aligns controls to frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, Nist CSF, PCI DSS). It identifies compliance gaps, policy deviations and audit risks, helping organisations to meet compliance obligations and avoid fines, penalties and reputational damage.
3. Improve Cloud Visibility
Many companies have shadow resources that are not being used - available VMs, public endpoints, expired IAM users. An assessment brings complete visibility of assets, permissions, data flows and security gaps.
4. Reduce Costs
Resources that are not being used, or that are risky, are identified and optimised (cloud bills are lower, the attack surface is reduced and operational losses are lower)
5. Construct a Resilient Cloud Architecture
The assessment is made so that the cloud becomes very available, encrypted and resilient.
6. Build Customer Confidence & Trust in the Market
- Strong cloud security provides credibility to clients, investors, regulators and business partners. It shows compliance with high security standards, which is allows for improved business opportunities, quicker approval of audits and increased customer retention.
Why Choose KavachOne for Cloud Security Assessment
KavachOne offer a specialized, expert-driven cloud security posture assessment designed to uncover hidden risks and strengthen your cloud environment. Our team combines automated scanning, in-depth manual analysis, and industry-approved methodologies to deliver accurate, reliable, and actionable results. We assess IAM roles, network controls, storage security, workload protection, monitoring systems, and compliance requirements specific to AWS, Azure, and GCP. With clear reporting, hands-on remediation support, and a business-focused approach, we prepare you to enhance cloud security posture, reduce risks, and help ensure long-term cloud resilience.