After moving everything to the cloud, which cloud security assessment tools make sense for small setups?

You can run open-source tools as a weekly cron job on a VM and have the results emailed to you. Tools that audit identity and access management rules in particular are great at catching unused service keys and overly broad permission roles. That's more than enough to start with.

Before looking for expensive tools, check these three things right away: 1) Is public read access disabled on your object storage buckets? 2) Are database and server management ports restricted strictly to your internal static IP? 3) Is 2FA enforced for all admin console logins? Nailing those eliminates the vast majority of your risk.

We shelled out $12,000 a year for an enterprise tool and panicked the first month because it threw 600 violation alerts. Turns out one of them was literally just a missing tag on a test server. Tools that generate this much noise paralyze small teams. Going step by step with native console tools makes way more sense.

client audit questionnaires usually look intimidating but tbh they arent looking for a fancy enterprise software name. tbh they just want to see documentation showing that you periodically scan your infrastructure and have a process to fix the vulnerabilities you find.

set up open-source scanners and export the output as html but tell the client you run automated weekly security scans on your cloud infra and share that summary report, for most enterprise clients thats more than enough proof.

note: I wrote this based on my own experience, it might not apply to everyone.

Is your client subject to any specific compliance frameworks? Are you storing healthcare data or credit card numbers? If you don't have strict regulatory mandates, blowing your budget on expensive third-party tools is totally unnecessary.

Turn on your cloud provider's native security hub, tighten your rules, and run a weekly scan using an open-source audit tool.

Thanks a lot, I'll try it today.

Let me share what happened to me; it might be useful. Having backups accessible on the same network and with the same identity makes them part of the target.

The answer varies greatly by industry; there is no one-size-fits-all rule. I'm also curious if anyone does it differently.

I have no experience with cloud security assessment tools, so I'm asking. Trying to do this alone is the most expensive way.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

correct.

I'll argue the opposite, don't get mad. Your time to detect an issue directly determines its cost.

Solutions that work at a small scale collapse when you grow; I learned this late. If you post the result here, it will help others too.

This is exactly what we experienced. Everyone rushing into cloud security assessment tools gets stuck at the same point.

I didn't know that. Forgotten test environments are more often the entry point than live systems.

Of course, it varies if your situation is different.

there is something to watch out for. if you scold false alarms, nobody will report again.

that's all sorry if I went on too long.

absolutely but i mean if I were to add anything: Dont rely on a single measure; go layer by layer.

good luck with that.

I'd appreciate it if you shared the outcome. Everything goes well for the first three months; problems arise in the fourth.

The real issue isn't the number but what it's based on. If you post the result here it will help others too.

Ill try it.