AWS Penetration Testing Services

Many businesses move workloads to AWS assuming the cloud provider handles every aspect of security. In reality, AWS follows a shared responsibility model: AWS secures the underlying infrastructure, while you remain responsible for securing applications, identities, data, configurations, and access controls. AWS allows penetration testing for many services without prior approval, provided testing follows AWS policies and restrictions.

As AWS environments grow, so does their complexity. New accounts, services, users, applications, and integrations can introduce security gaps that automated tools may miss. Penetration testing helps you understand how an attacker could exploit those weaknesses to reach cloud resources and business-critical systems.

Common issues uncovered during AWS penetration testing include overly permissive IAM roles, exposed services, weak authentication controls, insecure storage configurations, insufficient network segmentation, vulnerable applications, and opportunities for privilege escalation.

An AWS Penetration Test is a controlled security assessment. It identifies vulnerabilities within AWS-hosted environments. Unlike a basic vulnerability scan, penetration testing actively checks if weaknesses can be exploited to compromise systems, gain unauthorized access, or affect business operations.

The assessment evaluates both cloud-native services and workloads running in AWS. This often includes EC2 instances, virtual networks, web applications, APIs, containers, serverless functions, identity services, databases, and storage resources. AWS permits testing against many customer-owned AWS resources but prohibits testing AWS-owned infrastructure and certain restricted activities.

The goal is not simply to generate a list of vulnerabilities but to understand the real-world risks they pose.

Every engagement starts with planning. We work closely with you to review your AWS architecture, define the scope, and align testing with your business goals, security priorities, and operational requirements.

We combine manual testing with automated analysis to uncover security weaknesses across your cloud infrastructure. Our team focuses on identity and access management, network security, cloud-native services, exposed resources, application security, and paths to privilege escalation.

Where appropriate, we test whether attackers could use a single weakness to move deeper into your AWS environment. This helps you understand likely impact, prioritize remediation, and reduce risk more effectively.

After testing, you receive a detailed report with findings, risk ratings, business impact, clear remediation guidance, and prioritized next steps so your team can take action quickly.

AWS environments include many interconnected services, and identity and access management is one of the most critical areas to secure. Our consultants review IAM users, roles, permissions, trust relationships, authentication controls, and privilege boundaries to determine whether access is appropriately restricted.

We also assess cloud infrastructure components such as EC2 instances, VPC configurations, security groups, load balancers, databases, containers, APIs, and storage services. We pay close attention to configurations that may expose resources to unauthorized users or create unintended attack paths.

Application security testing is often included to identify vulnerabilities in web applications, APIs, authentication mechanisms, session management, and other cloud-hosted workloads.

By combining cloud configuration review with penetration testing, we give you a clearer and more actionable view of your AWS security posture than either assessment alone.

Many AWS security incidents stem from configuration errors rather than software vulnerabilities. During AWS penetration testing engagements, our consultants frequently identify security weaknesses involving identity management, cloud storage, network security, and access control configurations.

Some of the most common issues include overly permissive IAM roles, publicly exposed S3 buckets, unrestricted security groups, excessive administrative privileges, insecure API endpoints, inadequate logging, weak multi-factor authentication, and cloud resources accessible from the internet when they should remain private.

These types of misconfigurations can create opportunities for attackers to gain unauthorized access, escalate privileges, move laterally between resources, and access sensitive business data.

Identifying and correcting these weaknesses significantly reduces the attack surface of an AWS environment while improving overall cloud security maturity.

AWS penetration testing can support numerous cybersecurity and compliance initiatives. Many businesses perform cloud penetration testing to satisfy internal security requirements, prepare for audits, validate cloud security controls, or demonstrate due diligence to customers and business partners.

Penetration testing can support security programs aligned with PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, CIS Controls, CMMC, and other industry standards that emphasize vulnerability management and security testing.

Regular testing shows that independent parties have evaluated and validated your cloud security controls.

One of the most common misconceptions about cloud security is that moving to AWS automatically transfers all security responsibilities to Amazon. In reality, AWS operates under a Shared Responsibility Model that divides security responsibilities between AWS and its customers.

AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, including the physical data centers, hardware, networking infrastructure, and foundational cloud services that support the AWS platform. Customers, however, remain responsible for cloud security. This includes managing user access, configuring security controls, securing applications, protecting sensitive data, implementing encryption, maintaining operating systems, and monitoring cloud resources for suspicious activity.

The specific responsibilities vary depending on the AWS services being used. For example, AWS assumes more operational responsibility for managed services such as Amazon RDS and AWS Lambda, while customers retain greater responsibility for infrastructure deployed on Amazon EC2 instances. Regardless of the service model, businesses remain accountable for ensuring that their cloud environments are configured securely and that access to sensitive resources is properly controlled.

Many AWS security incidents occur not because AWS infrastructure was compromised, but because customer-managed resources were misconfigured, overly permissive, or insufficiently monitored. An AWS Penetration Test helps validate that security controls implemented under the customer’s portion of the Shared Responsibility Model are functioning as intended and effectively protecting cloud resources from real-world attacks.

Tanner Security is an independent security consulting firm with more than 25 years of experience helping organizations identify and reduce risk. Our team combines cloud security, penetration testing, and risk management expertise to uncover critical vulnerabilities and deliver practical guidance.

We do more than provide a list of automated findings. We focus on real-world risk, business impact, and remediation steps your team can use to improve security quickly and confidently.

Contact Tanner Security to gain confidence in your AWS environment, strengthen cloud security, and reduce business and compliance risk.