Cloud Security Best Practices

IAM is still the most common finding

Overly broad IAM roles remain the single most frequent finding in our cloud assessments — permissions granted for convenience during setup that never get scoped down. Least-privilege isn't a one-time exercise; it needs periodic review as services and teams change.

Start with roles that have wildcard resource access and narrow them first — that's usually where the highest-impact gaps live.

Encryption defaults aren't always the right defaults

Most providers encrypt data at rest by default now, which is good, but key management is where the real decisions happen. Who can access the keys, and does that access get logged and reviewed, matters as much as whether encryption is 'on'.

Segmentation limits blast radius

Flat network architectures mean a single compromised workload can reach everything else in the environment. Segmenting by function and enforcing it at the security-group level turns one incident into a contained one instead of a full breach.

Monitoring needs to know what normal looks like

Logging without a baseline just generates noise. The teams that catch incidents fastest are the ones who've defined what normal API and network activity looks like well before an incident happens.