Common Cloud Misconfigurations and How to Prevent Them

As companies continue migrating from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud, attacks on the cloud are increasing. We can blame lots of these attacks on cloud misconfigurations, which usually occur when developers make infrastructure changes without understanding the consequences.

In this post, we’ll discuss what cloud misconfigurations are, some common types, and the best ways to prevent them. We’ll also dip into some case studies and show you how cloud misconfigurations impacted the companies.

Common Types of Cloud Misconfiguration

Cloud misconfigurations can occur in different places in the cloud infrastructure and are of different types. Let’s look at some cloud misconfiguration examples.

1. Identity and Access Management (IAM)

IAM misconfigurations often cause unauthorized access and data breach issues.

• If an individual or a group has more permissions than required, they can exploit it with unauthorized actions, causing data leaks or system compromises.
• To protect systems from unauthorized access, be sure to implement multifactor authentication (MFA) as an extra layer of protection after passwords.

2. Data Storage Configuration

Sensitive information can be exposed as a result of misconfiguration.

• Misconfiguration of cloud storage buckets can lead to sensitive data exposure by setting the bucket access to public instead of private, making the bucket accessible to the public.
• Data at rest or in transit can easily be intercepted or accessed by unauthorized users if there’s a misconfiguration in encryption.

3. Networking Configuration

Network misconfigurations allow attackers to discover entry points to the organization’s internal systems.

• Open ports and insecure APIs might allow unauthorized access to internal systems.
• Inadequate firewall settings allow traffic that helps attackers succeed or restricts the traffic that the system needs for operational purposes.

4. Misconfigured Logging and Monitoring

Proper logging and monitoring are important for understanding when something goes wrong since it’s impossible to guarantee that nothing unexpected will happen.

• Disabled or insufficient logging restricts the ability to track what users are doing.
• Ineffective monitoring and alerting can slow your awareness of threats.

Causes of Cloud Misconfiguration

There are multiple things that can cause a cloud misconfiguration, and you need to know what they are if you’re going to prevent and resolve them in the future.

Human Error

Human errors occur frequently due to a lack of knowledge and expertise and simple mistakes that even experts can make. Some of the main errors include cloud administrators or developers mistyping something, setting incorrect parameters, or forgetting to turn on the necessary protection settings. Note that the high speed of cloud computing and constant changes in programs and services contribute enormously to the increase in the frequency of mistakes.

Lack of Expertise

Cloud technologies are highly complex and rapidly evolving. This means that many organizations do not have a skilled team of employees with complete knowledge of the cloud. Teams often don’t even know what kinds of adjustments to the cloud systems they need to make, resulting in a critical number of cloud-related misconfigurations.

Complex Cloud Architecture

Modern cloud infrastructure is extraordinarily complex due to the huge amount of technology, services, virtual assistants, etc. This complexity makes it difficult to maintain and secure configurations across all components. Thus, the chances of misconfigurations increase with the rising number of cloud services.

Poor Governance and Policy Management

Poorly defined procedures and policies and a lack of governance are the most common source of misconfigurations. If your company doesn’t perform annual system audits, you should expect misconfigurations to have accumulated that you haven’t even identified yet.

Impacts of Cloud Misconfiguration

Organizations can face serious consequences because of cloud misconfigurations.

1. Data breaches

Data breaches are of course one of the most concerning risks related to cloud misconfigurations. If you have improper cloud storage settings, network security, or access control, there’s a good chance that sensitive data could be leaked. Data breaches can lead to the theft of customers’ personal information, transfer of funds, and employee data.

2. Financial Losses

Organizations often experience financial losses due to misconfigurations.

• Investigating data breaches sucks up time and resources.
• Data protection regulations, if not properly followed, can result in fines and penalties.
• Sales decrease when services are slow or unavailable.
• Customers whose data is stolen frequently file lawsuits.

3. Legal and Compliance Issues

Many industries must comply with strict data protection laws. Misconfigured clouds can lead to unauthorized access to data, and data breaches could easily place you in violation of regulations. You can expect to suffer the following:

• Governmental fines and penalties
• Mandatory audits and oversight
• Legal action from affected parties

Case Studies of Cloud Misconfiguration

Data breaches due to cloud misconfigurations happen often. Below are a couple of case studies that may help you understand them better.

#1. Capital One Data Breach

A Capital One data breach occurred in July 2019 when the bank was targeted by a cyberattack due to a cloud misconfiguration. Almost 100 million people in the United States and Canada were affected.

• The breach was caused by a misconfigured web application firewall in Capital Bank’s AWS cloud.
• An unauthorized party managed to access the bank’s storage buckets and copy data.
• The data included individuals’ names, addresses, credit scores, credit limits, balances, and other of information.
• A fine of $80 million was imposed on the firm by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).
• Capital One settled a class-action lawsuit for $190 million.

This case shows how serious the problem can be and how cloud misconfigurations affect large financial institutions.

#2. Microsoft Power Apps misconfiguration

The Microsoft Power Apps case occurred in August 2021 when 38 million records were exposed on the platform due to a cloud misconfiguration.

• Public audiences obtained access to information that was supposed to be private by default.
• Some of the affected organizations included American Airlines, Ford, Indiana Department of Health, and the New York City Municipal Transportation Authority.
• The copied metadata contained customers’ names, email addresses, and COVID-19 vaccination status.
• The issue was resolved by setting data to be private by default. However, one had to take manual actions to configure the settings afterward.

The case proves that even the most common platforms used in various organizations may be misconfigured, and the vast amount of accessible information on records can be impacted by the issue and calls for regular configuration audits.

Best Practices for Preventing Cloud Misconfiguration

Preventing cloud misconfigurations involves a variety of technical and human-related best practices.

#1. Implementing IAM Policies

To reduce cloud misconfigurations, it is essential to follow the principle of least privilege and ensure that a user or service accessing the cloud has no more than the permissions the user or service needs. Additionally, strengthens passwords and enables multifactor authentication to reduce the possibility of each IAM actor gaining unauthorized access. Companies and their human services can contribute to a secure IAM environment by also reviewing and auditing users’ and services’ permissions to eliminate unnecessary permissions.

#2. Regular Security Audits and Penetration Testing

By doing frequent security audits, organizations can spot cloud misconfigurations and resolve them in time. Penetration testing simulates attackers’ behavior to identify and exploit undetected cloud vulnerabilities arising from cloud misconfigurations on the organization’s part.

#3. Using Automation and Tools

Automation and the use of proper security tools are also best practices to reduce human error in cloud misconfigurations and guarantee similarly shaped configurations across cloud solutions. You can use infrastructure as code (IaC) tools to standardize repeated infrastructure deployment processes and automated compliance checking.

Configuration Management Tools

To maintain consistent and secure settings in cloud environments, configuration management tools are essential. These tools can track, manage, and enforce configuration policies for different cloud services and resources. Implementing these tools with version control features allows the organization to see how configurations are assigned and roll back to previous versions when needed. However, because these tools manage and access many cloud resources and services, frequent updates and patches are essential to make sure your solutions can handle new cloud environments.

1. Continuous Monitoring Solutions

Continuous monitoring solutions provide real-time visibility into cloud environments to detect and respond to misconfigurations as they happen. Most cloud security posture management tools offer ongoing assessment and monitoring of cloud infrastructure and provide real-time alerts to the relevant teams. Tools that provide alerts for changes in critical configurations help organizations detect and address security violations immediately.

2. Employee Training and Awareness Programs

An organization’s basic defense line is developing employee training and awareness programs for preventing cloud misconfigurations. Human factors remain one of the most significant risk factors in cloud security, something that many cloud security solutions cannot fully eliminate or account for. Hence, by training and educating employees about security cloud practices, organizations can minimize the risk of human-based cloud misconfigurations. They can achieve this through periodic training sessions, workshops, and guidelines.

Tools and Solutions to Identify and Fix Misconfigurations

You can identify and resolve cloud misconfigurations using a number of tools that are already available in the market.

1. Cloud security posture management (CSPM)

CSPM tools are designed to continuously monitor and assess cloud environments to detect misconfigurations and compliance failures. These kinds of tools automate security checks, provide real-time alerts, and help fix misconfigurations fast. With the help of CSPM tools, it is possible to scan all cloud infrastructure for various misconfigurations, such as open storage buckets or an IAM policy that is too permissive.

2. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

SIEM tools collect and analyze data from logs and events for a cloud environment. The ability of SIEM solutions to correlate events within and across systems is critical to the detection of any security incidents and to identify possible misconfigurations. SIEM tools can provide information about unusual patterns of access across the entire cloud infrastructure.

3. Vulnerability Scanners and Penetration Testing Tools

Vulnerability scanners and penetration testing tools scan cloud environments to discover vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities may be created by various misconfigurations, sometimes without even being suspected by developers and administrators. Vulnerability scanners can recognize, for example, open ports, deficient encryption, and outdated software. Penetration testing tools simulate real-world attacks on the system to identify its weaknesses caused by misconfigurations that are thoroughly exploited.

Mitigate Cloud Misconfigurations with SentinelOne

SentinelOne leverages a world-class, autonomous, AI-driven platform that can greatly improve your cloud security. It can resolve common cloud misconfigurations using its built-in 1000+ checks and provide deep visibility across your entire cloud estate.

Singularity™ Cloud Security from SentinelOne is the most comprehensive and integrated CNAPP solution available. Its core features are:

• Agentless deployments, secret scanning, and IaC scanning
• External attack surface and management (EASM), vulnerability management, and AI security posture management (AI-SPM)
• Cloud infrastructure entitlement management, container and Kubernetes security posture management (KSPM), and cloud security posture management (CSPM)
• Hybrid cloud protection, cloud detection and response, and cloud data security
• World-class threat intelligence powered by Singularity Data Lake and Purple AI
• No code/low code hyper-automation workflows, Offensive Security Engine™, and Verified Exploit Paths™
• Accelerated incident response, endpoint protection, and identity threat protection
• Patented Storylines™ technology for workload telemetry and cloud forensics

With the use of AI and machine learning, SentinelOne can predict and prevent critical cloud security issues. Companies save time and effort and it reduces their overall mean time to detect (MTTD) and respond to emerging security issues.

Wrapping Up

Modern cloud security solutions offer several benefits but they also introduce new risks. The challenge of not knowing when a solution is missing a feature update or not adaptive to emerging vulnerabilities is a pressing concern.

To best protect your enterprise, it’s crucial to understand the implications of using these tools. Even the best cloud security measures can fail due to the element of human error. That’s why security automation needs to be combined with human insight for best results.

By adopting best practices such as proper IAM policies, regular security audits, and employee training, organizations can reduce the risk of common cloud misconfigurations.

Maintain a proactive approach to threat detection and build a strong security foundation with SentinelOne today.

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