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Cloud Risk Assessment and Penetration Test

Cloud Risk Assessment and Penetration Test

Cloud Risk Assessment and Penetration Test

Cloud Risk Assessment and Penetration Testing Services for AWS, Azure, and Microsoft 365

Your cloud environment moves fast, but security gaps can move faster. As businesses expand across Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft 365, misconfigurations, excessive permissions, exposed storage, and weak identity controls can quietly create high-impact risk. A cloud risk assessment and penetration test helps you identify those issues early, before they lead to data exposure, unauthorized access, or costly disruption.

Many cloud incidents are not caused by complex exploits. They happen because basic security controls were missed: least privilege was not enforced, multi-factor authentication was inconsistently applied, logging was incomplete, or cloud services were deployed with insecure default settings. Industry guidance consistently highlights identity, access control, and configuration management as the most common sources of cloud risk.

At Tanner Security, we help you uncover real cloud risk and turn findings into action. Our cloud risk assessments and cloud penetration tests are designed to show where your environment is exposed, how attackers could take advantage of those weaknesses, and what your team should prioritize next. The result is a roadmap that helps you reduce risk, strengthen security controls, support compliance goals, and build confidence in your cloud environment.

AWS Penetration Test 

Our AWS penetration testing services focus on evaluating your Amazon Web Services environment for security flaws. We assess your cloud infrastructure, applications, and services to ensure they comply with industry standards. Our approach includes:

  • Configuration Review: Check for misconfigurations and ensure industry best practices are followed.
  • Access Control Testing: Verifying that permissions and access controls are correctly implemented.
  • Vulnerability Scanning: Identifying and mitigating security vulnerabilities in your AWS environment.

Azure Penetration Test 

We provide comprehensive penetration testing for Microsoft Azure environments, helping you secure your cloud deployments. Our Azure penetration testing includes the following:

  • Infrastructure Assessment: Our security analysts will evaluate the security controls around your Azure infrastructure and resources.
  • Identity and Access Management: Testing the effectiveness of your identity and access management policies.
  • Application Security: Analyzing applications hosted on Azure for potential vulnerabilities.

Microsoft 365 Security Reviews 

Our Microsoft 365 security reviews are designed to ensure your Microsoft 365 environment is secure and compliant. We offer:

  • Configuration Analysis: Reviewing settings and configurations to ensure they meet security standards.
  • Access and Permission Checks: Ensuring user access and permissions are correctly managed.
  • Data Protection Assessment: Evaluating how well your data is protected within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

What Is a Cloud Risk Assessment?

A cloud risk assessment is a review of your cloud environment to identify security weaknesses, misconfigurations, compliance gaps, and operational risk. It evaluates how well your cloud infrastructure, identities, applications, and data are protected, and where improvements are needed.

Unlike a basic vulnerability scan, a cloud security assessment looks beyond known software flaws. It examines your cloud architecture, identity and access management, data protection, logging and monitoring, governance controls, third-party integrations, and incident response readiness. This broader view helps companies understand not just what is vulnerable, but what is most likely to create business risk.

The assessment helps answer important business questions. Are cloud resources configured securely? Are users granted more access than necessary? Is sensitive data adequately protected? Can security incidents be detected and investigated? Are cloud controls aligned with regulatory and customer requirements?

Understanding these risks allows businesses to make informed security decisions and prioritize remediation efforts based on the business impact.

What Is Cloud Penetration Testing?

Cloud penetration testing evaluates your environment from an attacker’s perspective. Instead of only listing weaknesses, cloud pen tests review business logic to determine whether it can be exploited to gain unauthorized access, elevate privileges, expose sensitive data, or move through cloud resources and connected services.

A cloud penetration test may include internet-facing applications, APIs, identity platforms, cloud-hosted workloads, storage resources, remote access paths, and authentication controls. This helps validate real-world attack paths so you can focus on the issues that matter most, not just the ones that look serious on paper.

Many businesses discover that their greatest cloud risks stem from identity-related issues rather than traditional software vulnerabilities. Overprivileged accounts, weak authentication controls, exposed APIs, and excessive access permissions often create opportunities for attackers to compromise cloud environments. Industry experts frequently emphasize that cloud assessments should focus heavily on identity, permissions, and access pathways rather than relying solely on automated configuration checks.

  • Identify exposed cloud assets and insecure configurations
  • Validate whether weak controls can be exploited in realistic attack scenarios
  • Prioritize remediation based on business risk and attacker impact
  • Give leadership and technical teams a clearer picture of cloud security posture

Take the Next Step

Take advantage of our customized cloud risk assessment and cloud penetration test.

Why Cloud Security Assessments Matter

Cloud environments change constantly. New users, applications, integrations, and services are added all the time, which makes security drift almost inevitable. Without an independent cloud security assessment, critical issues can remain hidden until they trigger an incident, audit finding, or customer concern.

Many successful cloud breaches are caused by misconfigurations rather than flaws in the cloud provider’s infrastructure. Publicly exposed storage accounts, excessive administrative privileges, weak conditional access policies, unsecured APIs, and improperly configured cloud services can all create opportunities for attackers.

An assessment gives you an outside perspective, a prioritized list of findings, and guidance your team can act on. It also helps you answer critical questions from customers, auditors, and leadership about cloud risk, resilience, and security maturity.

Our Cloud Risk Assessment Methodology

Every engagement starts with scoping. We work with your team to understand your cloud platforms, business objectives, compliance drivers, and highest-priority risks. From there, we define what systems, services, identities, and workflows should be included in the assessment.

We then review cloud configurations, identity and access controls, authentication, logging and monitoring, network exposure, encryption settings, governance processes, and key security workflows. Where appropriate, we perform penetration testing to determine whether identified weaknesses can be exploited and to validate the real-world impact of those findings.

At the end of the engagement, you receive a report built for both leadership and technical teams: an executive summary, detailed findings, risk ratings, and prioritized remediation guidance. This helps you move faster from assessment to improvement and gives stakeholders a clearer view of your cloud security posture.

We were fortunate to have collaborated with Tanner IT Security Consultants. From the outset, John’s team exhibited a remarkable depth of knowledge and a clear understanding of our specific requirements.

Andy W. – Chief Information Security Officer

Cloud Platforms We Assess

We perform cloud security assessments and cloud penetration testing across the platforms most companies use, including AWS, Azure, and Microsoft 365.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS environments often include many interconnected services, identities, and data stores. Our AWS cloud security assessments review IAM, account structure, storage exposure, network controls, logging, encryption, cloud-native services, and workload security to identify issues that could lead to unauthorized access or data loss. AWS security incidents frequently stem from customer-side configuration issues rather than the AWS platform itself, making independent assessments particularly valuable.

Microsoft Azure

Azure environments bring unique challenges around Microsoft Entra ID, RBAC, Conditional Access, virtual networking, subscriptions, and cloud applications. Our Azure security assessments focus on identity security, administrative access, cloud configuration, and governance so you can reduce exposure and improve control across the environment.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 often holds the business’s most sensitive communications, files, and collaboration data. Our Microsoft 365 security assessments evaluate authentication, MFA adoption, Conditional Access, privileged access, email security, data protection, and tenant-wide security settings to determine whether critical information is properly protected. We recommend enabling MFA and built-in security controls as core Microsoft 365 security controls.

Common Cloud Security Risks We Identify

Our assessments frequently uncover issues such as excessive permissions, weak MFA coverage, publicly exposed storage, insecure APIs, risky administrative access, incomplete logging, weak monitoring, and poor separation of duties. These are the types of gaps that often create the shortest path to compromise in cloud environments.

Many of these issues begin from normal business growth and cloud adoption rather than intentional mismanagement. However, they can create significant opportunities for attackers if left unaddressed.

  • Overprivileged users, service accounts, and administrative roles
  • Misconfigured storage and internet-exposed cloud resources
  • Weak multi-factor authentication and poor conditional access coverage
  • Insufficient logging, alerting, and incident visibility
  • Insecure integrations, APIs, and third-party access paths

Benefits of Cloud Risk Assessments and Penetration Testing

A cloud risk assessment helps IT teams see where your environment is most exposed and what actions will reduce risk fastest. Instead of sorting through technical noise, your team gets clear priorities, stronger insight into cloud security posture, and practical recommendations aligned to real business impact.

For leadership, that means better decision-making and stronger support for compliance, customer assurance, and budget planning. For technical teams, it means a clearer path to remediation, stronger defensive controls, and more confidence that cloud security investments are addressing the right problems.

Cloud Risk Assessment and Penetration Testi Frequently Asked Questions

A cloud risk assessment is a formal review of your cloud environment to identify security weaknesses, misconfigurations, compliance gaps, and operational risk. It helps organizations understand their cloud security posture and prioritize the fixes that matter most.

A cloud risk assessment identifies weaknesses in cloud architecture, identity, access, and governance. A cloud penetration test goes a step further by attempting to exploit those weaknesses in a controlled manner to validate real-world impact.

Cloud environments change constantly. New users, services, applications, and integrations can introduce security risks that are difficult to identify without an independent review. Regular assessments help ensure cloud resources remain secure as the environment evolves.

Cloud security assessments can cover AWS, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), cloud-hosted applications, identity platforms, storage services, APIs, and cloud-native security controls depending on scope.

Most businesses should perform a security assessment annually. Additional assessments are often recommended after cloud migrations, major infrastructure changes, mergers, acquisitions, significant application deployments, or security incidents.

A configuration review focuses primarily on technical settings and best practices. A cloud risk assessment evaluates configurations, governance, access management, monitoring, compliance requirements, incident response readiness, and overall business risk.

Yes. Cloud risk assessments often support initiatives tied to ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, CMMC, NIST, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, CIS Controls, and customer security requirements by identifying gaps in cloud controls and helping teams prioritize remediation.

Common findings include excessive permissions, weak identity controls, inadequate multi-factor authentication, exposed storage repositories, misconfigured cloud resources, insecure APIs, insufficient logging, and privileged accounts with unnecessary access.

Penetration testing is carefully planned and conducted in accordance with approved rules of engagement. Testing activities are designed to minimize operational impact while still providing meaningful security validation.

The timeline depends on the environment’s size and complexity. Smaller environments may be assessed within a couple weeks, while large multi-cloud environments may require additional time to evaluate thoroughly.

AWS assessments focus heavily on IAM, cloud-native services, infrastructure security, and workload protection. Azure assessments emphasize Entra ID, RBAC, conditional access, and cloud infrastructure controls. Microsoft 365 assessments concentrate on identity security, email security, collaboration tools, and data protection controls.

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