Cloud Security Testing: Techniques & Benefits

What is Cloud Security Testing?

Cloud security testing systematically identifies and assesses security vulnerabilities in your cloud infrastructure and apps. It is done to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of cloud data. Cloud security tests are done with specific security tools like SAST, CASB, SASE, CSPM, and CWPP. They provide features such as 2-factor authentication, encryption, and can also conduct penetration tests.

Why is Cloud Security Testing Important?

Cloud Security Testing can evaluate the security posture of your cloud infrastructure, apps, and data. What this means is it will help you identify key vulnerabilities and weaknesses that could be potentially exploited. You will get the chance to patch them before they are found or any breaches happen. Cloud Security Tests are also needed by your organization to maintain good compliance. It demonstrates your commitment to safeguarding sensitive information with stringent industry benchmarks like HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI-DSS. Cloud Security Testing is also done to patch CVEs in your cloud infrastructure and identify them.

You can improve your brand’s trustworthiness, reputation, and share publicly verifiable safety certificates, which can be issued after these tests are done. Customers will trust your company more and your organization will be positioned as being a responsible steward of their sensitive data.

How does it differ from traditional security testing?

In cloud security testing, your testing environment is hosted by a third-party provider. You can remotely access this anywhere from the internet, at any time, and from any device. Cloud testing can replicate the conditions and configurations of your production environments.

There are many types of cloud security tests like performance and load tests. Performance cloud security tests test the version of apps and systems under normal and peak load conditions. Load testing involves simulating many users trying to access apps and services. Load cloud security tests are done to test the stability and scalability of apps, infrastructure components, and services. 

Traditional testing involves the use of software, hardware, and mechanical devices. You work with a physical infrastructure that can operate online. The goal of traditional testing is to identify flaws with your products and other issues. It checks for quality standards, functionality, and can help improve the reliability of your products. Traditional security tests are performed as and when expected and are crucial in developing systems, products, and any types of services. There are two main types of traditional tests which are – manual tests (no automation tools are used, users execute test cases manually on their own and perform actions plus compare benchmarks) and automated tests (using automation tools and software, such as in the case of frequent regression testing or large-scale test cases).

Why is Cloud Security Testing Critical?

Did you know that 44% of companies had reported a cloud data breach within the past year in 2024? Cloud’s shared responsibility model doesn’t do it justice when it comes to protecting its infrastructure and customers. There is confusion as to who is in charge of what, and you can find blind spots and security gaps all the time due to this division.

Misconfigured IAM roles are becoming common and so are publicly exposed storage buckets. Many private networks also allow unprivileged access which threat actors take full advantage of. Then there is the risk of identity sprawl, lateral movement, shifting network perimeters, and vulnerable container images.

Cloud security tests can boost your team’s confidence in their ability to catch misconfigurations in cloud setups early on. You also get to meet your compliance requirements and avoid expensive lawsuits. Cloud security testing can fine-tune security monitoring and response playbooks. What does this mean? It means you can spot and stop threats quickly, even before they happen sometimes. You can also mitigate key business risks and foster stakeholder trust.

Types of Cloud Security Testing

Here are the main types of cloud security tests you need to know about:

Penetration Testing:

Cloud penetration testing simulates real-world attacks. It identifies vulnerabilities in your cloud infrastructure. You can choose from three main approaches:

• Black Box Testing: This requires no prior knowledge of your cloud systems, mimicking how external attackers would probe your defenses. 
• Gray Box Testing: Here, you provide limited information about your environment. It combines insider threat simulation with external attack vectors. 
• White Box Testing: You grant full administrative access, allowing comprehensive analysis of your security controls and configurations.

Vulnerability Assessment

Automated vulnerability scanning helps identify known security weaknesses across your cloud applications and infrastructure. These scans examine your systems for unpatched software, misconfigurations, and compliance violations. 

Configuration Audits

Configuration analysis identifies weak access controls, open ports, and insecure settings that could expose your systems to breaches. Cloud environments are particularly vulnerable to misconfigurations. Studies show that 93% of organizations experience cloud security incidents due to faulty configurations.

Compliance Testing

Compliance testing ensures your cloud infrastructure meets regulatory requirements. SOC 2 compliance focuses on five trust service criteria: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. ISO 27017 provides cloud-specific security controls building on ISO 27001, with 37 standard controls plus 7 additional cloud-specific requirements. HIPAA compliance protects healthcare data in cloud environments through encryption, access controls, and audit trails. All your cloud tests will ensure you meet these compliance frameworks and their benchmarks or requirements.

Red Team/Blue Team Exercises

Red team exercises combine external reconnaissance, phishing campaigns, and internal network testing to assess your detection and response capabilities. They operate with stealth to mimic sophisticated threat actors. Blue teams focus on detection and response, while purple team exercises help collaborate across offensive and defensive teams to improve security posture.

How to Perform Cloud Security Testing?

Cloud security testing is an intricate task requiring numerous approaches and methodologies to achieve thorough coverage. If you’re seeking to secure any public, private, or hybrid cloud, here’s a practical plan for conducting Cloud Security Testing:

• Risk Evaluation: Recognizing and understanding all the threats facing your cloud environment is paramount. Take time to identify assets and vulnerabilities that require protection; analyze potential threat vectors to prioritize according to the potential impact, etc.

• Ascertain Your Scope: Define which areas of your cloud environment need testing – applications, networks, and data centers among them – then set clear boundaries and expectations to meet business goals and comply with compliance regulations.

• Choose Your Testing Methodology: Determine what testing methodologies would work for the assessed area. Some commonly employed approaches include penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, and security auditing – these approaches give an integrated picture of the security landscape.

• Utilize Appropriate Tools: Take advantage of tools specially tailored for Cloud Security Testing, such as SentinelOne, OWASP ZAP, or others, which automate certain aspects of testing to provide more efficient and precise analyses.

• Execute Testing: Implement and document chosen testing methodologies while monitoring their findings throughout. Work closely with relevant stakeholders (developers/IT personnel etc.) to ensure an organized effort.

• Analyze Results: Analyze your collected data to identify patterns, weaknesses, and possible threats to assess the severity and impacts associated with any discoveries to prioritize remediation efforts.

• Remediation Measures: Based on your analysis, take corrective actions to address vulnerabilities identified during analysis. This might involve patching, reconfiguring, or adding security controls as appropriate.

• Continuous Monitoring and Improvement: Cloud Security Testing should be an ongoing process, regularly reviewing security measures to adapt to emerging threats or changes within your cloud environment while employing continuous monitoring measures to maintain constant protection.

Cloud Security Testing Techniques

There are different types of cloud security testing techniques and they are:

• Vulnerability Assessments: Here, you check for known vulnerabilities in cloud apps and infrastructure. You focus on vulnerabilities based on their relevance and level of severity. Vulnerability assessments use automated scans and identify security loopholes. You also assess for weak points, flaws, and other misconfigurations.
• Penetration testing:  Pen tests launch simulated attacks on your infrastructure to evaluate it and find potential exploits. You end up uncovering weak authentication mechanisms, potential entry points, and other gaps in your security defenses.
• Source Code Analysis: Cloud testers will review the source code in apps to find flaws and coding vulnerabilities. They improve their coding practices in the development lifecycle. Source code analysis will take a granular look at your app’s architecture and find susceptible entry points. They also involve detecting cross-site scripting attempts and other vulnerabilities. 
• Dynamic Analysis: This analysis process will identify what vulnerabilities pop up when you’re actually using cloud apps and services. Its goal is to prevent real-time anomalies, access attempts, data leaks, and quickly respond to threats.
• Configuration Analysis: You identify weak access controls, open ports, and common configuration errors. You prevent unknown vulnerabilities from creeping in as well.

Cloud Testing in Different Environments

When you work in the cloud, it’s easy to assume the provider has everything locked down. In reality, gaps show up all the time. You need to test each setup to find weak spots before attackers do. Here are the different types of tests you need to do for different environments:

Public Cloud Security Testing

You will explore Google Cloud, AWS, or Azure and look for misconfigured identity roles, open storage buckets, and network rules that let anyone snoop around. You should use built-in tools and third-party scanners to run penetration tests, vulnerability scans, and configuration checks. Make sure you review permission boundaries and security group settings. That way, you can stop issues like public data exposure and unauthorized access.

Private Cloud Testing

Private cloud testing involves tracking and managing private devices that connect to your cloud networks. It’s ideal for industries such as healthcare, BFSI, telecom, and similar verticals where you work with sensitive information. You pre-configure and retain apps, accounts, settings, and eliminate repetitive setups. You will also manage access entitlements, sync, and secure other cloud-native workflows. Whatever you do within the organizations, stays inside, since you don’t share your resources with others.

Hybrid & Multi-Cloud Environments

You will face extra layers when your apps run across more than one cloud. You can test each segment separately and then run end-to-end tests to verify traffic paths and policies. You should check how your VPNs or direct connections handle encryption and route controls. Pay attention to where credentials move between environments and whether your container images remain safe throughout. There’s also a component of disaster recovery and cost optimization involved with hybrid and multi-cloud testing. You will test how your systems and services interact with each other across these environments and focus on secured interoperability.

Tools Used in Cloud Security Testing 

Open-source cloud security testing tools will help you improve the security posture of your cloud environments. They take care of configuration audits and you can use a general-purpose policy engine (OPA) to enforce policies across cloud apps and resources. These tools also include vulnerability scanning, identity and access management, and secrets management. They also take care of container and Kubernetes security plus IaC security.

Commercial cloud security testing tools include platforms from recognized vendors. They cover all aspects of cloud testing like Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), checking for web app vulnerabilities, compliance and risk assessments, and more. They address different layers of your cloud environment such as: Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), and others.

Cloud-native security testing tools feature platforms that integrate security throughout the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC). They ensure security from code development to runtime protection. Some examples of these tools are Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions, Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) tools, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security tools, and Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools.

Key Challenges in Cloud Security Testing

Here are the key challenges in cloud security testing:

• Visibility and Control: Being aware of and in charge of an entire cloud environment may seem challenging, particularly with multiple-cloud or hybrid scenarios that include different cloud services; lack of visibility may expose vulnerabilities that were otherwise undetected.
• Integrating With Existing Systems: Integrating Cloud Security Testing tools and methods with existing security systems and processes is often complex and time-consuming.
• Regulated Compliance: Meeting global and industry-specific regulations requires constant vigilance, making testing even more complicated.
• Skill and Resource Limitations: Conducting successful Cloud Security Testing requires specific expertise and resources; any shortage could impede testing procedures and leave holes in security.
• Dynamic Nature of Cloud Environments: Given their rapidly evolving and dynamic environments, continuous cloud service testing becomes essential and challenging to carry out efficiently.

Best Practices for Effective Cloud Security Testing

Here are the top cloud security testing best practices you need to be aware of:

• Implement strict identity and access management (IAM) controls. Encrypt your data both at rest and in transit. Do regular vulnerability assessments and pen tests at periodic intervals.
• Perform cloud compliance audits and configuration checks. Make an incident response plan and use Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools for monitoring, tracking, and resolving issues in real-time.
• You should also have a strong understanding of the cloud’s shared responsibility model. Know what you are in charge of and responsible for, plus what the vendor can do for you. This will help you plan and build your cloud-native security strategy and run tests accordingly. 
• Use Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tools and create regular backups. Limit access to sensitive data with role-based access controls. Backup your critical systems and make a disaster recovery plan. You should also implement a vendor risk management program in your organization and assess their security practices.
• Use Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) to get complete protection from code to development and deployment. Deploy cloud web app firewalls (WAF), adopt a zero trust security model, and also use SIEM tools for logging and analysis from different sources.

Cloud Compliance Considerations

Some of the most critical cloud compliance and governance frameworks are GDPR, HIPAA, FISMA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2, CIS, NIST, and FedRamp. Managing all of them is complex; it’s important to assess which ones are needed by your organization and implement them effectively. You need to know your storage limits, right to erase data, data residency rules for different countries, access rights, and what data you are allowed to collect, share, and process to fulfill your business requirements.

You need to conduct regular risk assessments and create comprehensive risk management frameworks. You’ll be reporting your findings to relevant authorities in your country or state. Categorizing your data, monitoring logs, and maintaining complete audit trails of user activity are other cloud compliance considerations.

CSPM plays a big role in ensuring adherence to your various cloud security policies and both internal and external regulatory standards. You can use them to detect compliance gaps, improve automated risk remediation, and get a unified view of your security posture. CSPM can help you implement the best cloud compliance management practices and unify visibility and reporting as well. Plus they provide audit support.

Cloud Security Testing Checklist

Here’s a cloud security testing checklist for your reference:

• First, see what you’re working with. Do a full audit of your cloud accounts, assets, users. This will give you visibility into your current security status and posture.  
• The main building blocks of your cloud security testing program will be – data security, network security, IAM and configuration management, incident detection and response, and vulnerability management. You also need to take a look at your container security and supply chain security.
• Use a unified agentless CNAPP to do your compliance audits. It will help you create a strong and resilient cloud security program. You will need to add multi-factor authentication for all privileged accounts. Enforce strong password policies and work towards preventing credential misuse or reuse.
• Audit your cloud security permissions and remove unwanted privileges. Watch out for inactive identities and over-permissioned accounts. You’ll also want to use Just-in-Time (JIT) access for protecting your sensitive data.
• Enable cloud audit logging, monitoring, and configuration change management. Add automated remediation for non-compliant changes and settings. You also want to use Infrastructure-as-code (IaC) templates to standardize secure configurations.
• Classify your sensitive data and enforce strong access policies. Add encryption at rest and transit, plus strong cryptographic standards. You should also use a CNAPP to continuously monitor for unauthorized access and sensitive data leaks.
• To monitor dependencies, you can use an agentless software bill of materials (SBOM). You should also implement verification mechanisms for signing software. Also, validate and secure your third-party apps and APIs, and monitor your repositories to detect compromised libraries.

Real-World Examples

How are companies improving cloud posture post-testing? Here’s what you need to keep an eye on:

• Google Cloud’s Chronicle Security Operations platform delivered a remarkable 407% ROI over three years with payback periods under seven months.
• Rubrik recently added new capabilities to transform its cyber resilience across cloud, hypervisors, and SaaS platforms. It used cloud security testing to improve and expand its data protection. By using Cloud Posture Risk Management (CPR), it addresses the lack of data visibility and automatically makes an inventory of and discovers unprotected cloud data assets.
• A Japanese financial institution implementing Dynatrace’s CSPM solution achieved an 80% reduction in troubleshooting time. It found latent risks by performing automated scans and compliance issues. Another German medical company used the same solution to save hundreds of hours across their entire IT team on security compliance.

How Will SentinelOne Help?

Singularity™ Cloud Security from SentinelOne is the most comprehensive and integrated CNAPP solution available in the market. It delivers SaaS security posture management and includes features like a graph-based asset inventory, shift-left security testing, CI/CD pipeline integration, container and Kubernetes security posture management, and more. SentinelOne can configure checks on AI services, discover AI pipelines and models, and provides protection that goes beyond CSPM. 

Here is what you can do with its agentless CNAPP:

• You can do cloud app pen-testing automatically, identify exploit paths, and get real-time AI-powered protection. SentinelOne protects cloud apps and services across public, private, on-prem, and hybrid cloud and IT environments. 
• You can do agentless vulnerability scanning and use its 1,000+ out-of-the-box and custom rules. It also solves issues related to cloud repositories, container registries, images, and IaC templates.
• SentinelOne’s CNAPP can manage cloud entitlements. It can tighten permissions and prevent secrets leakage. You can detect up to 750+ different types of secrets. Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) provides full forensic telemetry. You also get incident response from experts and it comes with a pre-built and customizable detection library.
• SentinelOne’s CNAPP also offers various features such as Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), External Attack and Surface Management (EASM), Secrets Scanning, IaC Scanning, SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR), AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM), and more.

SentinelOne’s Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) supports agentless deployment in minutes. You can easily assess compliance and eliminate misconfigurations. If your goal is to build a zero trust security architecture and enforce the principle of least privilege access across all cloud accounts, then SentinelOne can help you do that.

SentinelOne’s Offensive Security Engine™ can uncover and remediate vulnerabilities before attackers strike. Its Verified Exploit Paths™ and advanced attack simulations help identify hidden risks across cloud environments—far beyond traditional detection. With automated checks for misconfigurations, secret exposure, and real-time compliance scoring across AWS, Azure, GCP, and more, SentinelOne gives organizations an edge. SentinelOne enables GitLab secret scanning and integrates with Snyk.

Purple AI™ provides contextual summaries of alerts, suggested next steps and the option to seamlessly start an in-depth investigation aided by the power of generative and agentic AI – all documented in one investigation notebook. Multiple AI-powered detection engines work together to provide machine-speed protection against runtime attacks. SentinelOne provides autonomous threat protection at scale and does holistic root cause and blast radius analysis of affected cloud workloads, infrastructure, and data stores.

Singularity™ Cloud Workload Security helps you prevent ransomware, zero-days, and other runtime threats in real time. It can protect critical cloud workloads including VMs, containers, and CaaS with AI-powered detection and automated response. You can root out threats, supercharge investigation, do threat hunting, and empower analysts with workload telemetry. You can also run AI-assisted natural language queries on a unified data lake. SentinelOne CWPP supports containers, Kubernetes, virtual machines, physical servers, and serverless. It can secure public, private, hybrid, and on-prem environments.

Singularity™ Data Lake for Log Analytics can help you detect and resolve incidents in real time. It can capture and analyze 100% of your event data for monitoring, analytics, and new operational insights. If you are moving into a cloud-native SIEM and want limitless scalability and data retention, you can use SentinelOne’s AI-SIEM solution. It can speed up your security workflows with Hyperautomation. It will help you protect endpoints, clouds, networks, identities, email, and more. You can ingest data from multiple sources for analysis and automate your protection. Plus, you get greater visibility into investigations and detections with the industry’s only unified console experience.

In short, these are the core SentinelOne’s offerings for cloud security testing. You can do external and internal audits with the CNAPP. Use the rest of their products according to your custom business requirements and combine them if you want.

Conclusion

Cloud security testing isn’t just important, it’s non-negotiable. If you don’t test or scope for vulnerabilities and hidden weaknesses, your attackers are going to find them and mask their tracks better. Before you build a strong security foundation, start with testing. And then iterate, improve, and work your way up from there. If you’re new to cloud security testing or need some assistance with this, you can consult SentinelOne. We’re happy to help.