Why You Need a Cloud Infrastructure Security Audit?
We audited a major e-commerce project and found 47 critical vulnerabilities in the first two days. Typical first-audit findings: an S3 bucket with public access left from last year, an IAM role with a *:* policy for a service that only needed s3:GetObject, and a Security Group with 0.0.0.0/0 on port 22 in the production VPC. These are not isolated cases—analysis shows 94% of companies have at least one critical vulnerability in their cloud infrastructure. A security audit identifies these before attackers exploit them. Or after you've already received an AWS Trusted Advisor notification about public S3 access. Order an audit and get a remediation plan within 1–2 weeks.
What a Cloud Infrastructure Security Audit Includes
The audit covers multiple planes simultaneously: IAM, network security, data protection, monitoring, and compliance. We check for overprivileged roles, public S3 buckets, unencrypted disks, missing CloudTrail, and deviations from CIS Benchmarks. Prowler finds 30% more issues than ScoutSuite, especially in IAM. Additionally, we check compliance with standards like PCI DSS or SOC 2.
Identity & Access Management — overprivileged roles, unused credentials, missing MFA for root/admin accounts, cross-account roles with excessive permissions, service account keys in repositories (via git-secrets, truffleHog).
Network Security — Security Groups/Firewall Rules with overly permissive access, public subnets with instances, missing VPC Flow Logs, unencrypted traffic between services.
Data Protection — unencrypted EBS/GCS/Azure Disk volumes, public S3 buckets, RDS without encryption at rest, secrets in environment variables instead of Vault/SSM.
What Tools Are Used for the Audit?
We use a combination of tools:
| Tool | Features | Limitations | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prowler | 120+ checks, supports 3 clouds | Many false positives | Primary screening |
| ScoutSuite | Beautiful HTML report, agentless | Slow on large accounts | Detailed Azure audit |
| Checkov | CI/CD integration | IaC only | Pre-commit code check |
| CloudSploit | Simple, fast start | Fewer checks | Quick single-cloud audit |
Prowler is run with:
prowler aws --compliance cis_2.0_aws pci_3.2.1_aws \
--output-formats json html csv \
--output-directory reports/ \
--severity critical highScoutSuite for Azure:
scout azure --cli --subscription-id $SUBSCRIPTION_ID --report-dir reports/ Checkov for IaC:
checkov -d terraform/ --framework terraform --compact --output cli json --output-file-path reports/ CloudSploit deploys in 10 minutes.
Example Report
The final report contains an executive summary, a detailed findings list with risk rating, evidence, and remediation steps. For instance, for a public S3 bucket we provide Terraform code to enable Block Public Access.
How to Prepare for the Audit: Step-by-Step
- Provide read-only access to cloud accounts (IAM role with limited permissions, as in the example below).
- Grant access to IaC repositories (Terraform, CloudFormation).
- Inform us about critical services and exceptions.
- Schedule a window for data collection (typically 1–2 days with no load).
Example IAM policy for read-only AWS audit:
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"ec2:Describe*",
"s3:GetBucketPolicy",
"s3:GetBucketAcl",
"s3:ListAllMyBuckets",
"iam:Get*",
"iam:List*",
"cloudtrail:GetTrail*",
"config:Get*",
"securityhub:Get*"
],
"Resource": "*"
}
]
}How the Audit Runs
Data Collection Phase (1–2 Days) — Cloud Security Audit
Read-only access to the cloud account. Launch automated scanners—Prowler, ScoutSuite, Checkov for IaC. Manual review of IAM policies on critical services. Git-secrets / truffleHog scan repositories for committed credentials.
Analysis and Prioritization Phase (2–3 Days)
Automated scanners produce hundreds of findings. The task: remove false positives, group by category, and prioritize by real risk. An IAM role with *:* for a Lambda without VPC access is Critical in Prowler but real risk Medium. A public S3 bucket with logs is Medium in the scanner but real risk High. Our engineers have 10+ years of experience and have conducted over 50 audits, so we distinguish critical from minor.
Report and Remediation Plan Phase
The final report contains an executive summary, a detailed findings list with risk rating, evidence, and Terraform/CLI commands for remediation. We provide a roadmap: what to fix immediately, what to address in the next sprint, and what is planned work. Timeline: 1–2 weeks from first access to final report with remediation plan.
Typical Vulnerabilities and Their Risk
| Vulnerability | Risk | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Root account without MFA | Critical | Full account control |
| Public S3 bucket | High | Data leak |
| Security Group 0.0.0.0/0:22 | High | Unauthorized access |
| CloudTrail disabled | Medium | No audit trail |
| IAM user without key rotation | Medium | Key compromise |
Typical Findings in the First Audit
Based on practice—what appears almost always:
- Active AWS access keys for root account (blocks CIS 1.4 compliance—occurs in 60% of cases)
- IAM users with programmatic access without key rotation > 90 days
- Security Groups with
0.0.0.0/0for TCP 3389 (RDP) or 22 (SSH) in production - S3 Block Public Access not enabled at account level
- CloudTrail not enabled in all regions
- EBS snapshots with public access (often overlooked)
- Lambda Environment Variables with API keys in plain text
Each of these can lead to data breaches. The average cost of a cloud data breach is $4.5 million (per studies). Downtime from a cyberattack can exceed $10,000 per hour. Our clients save up to 60% on incident costs after fixing these issues. Contact us to order an audit and get a consultation.