Cloud penetration testing assesses your cloud environment the way an attacker would, covering misconfigurations, identity and access management, exposed services and privilege escalation across AWS, Azure and GCP. It differs from on-premises testing because the shared responsibility model changes what you control, so testing focuses on your configuration, identities and workloads.
What Is Cloud Penetration Testing?
Cloud penetration testing is a security assessment designed to determine whether weaknesses in your cloud environment could be exploited by an attacker.
Rather than simply scanning for known vulnerabilities, a penetration test examines how an attacker could combine weaknesses to gain unauthorised access, escalate privileges, access sensitive information or move between cloud resources.
For an Australian organisation, this can mean testing environments hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
The assessment can examine areas such as:
- Identity and access management
- Cloud configuration
- Publicly exposed services
- Storage permissions
- Network security controls
- Authentication and authorisation
- Privilege escalation
- Secrets and credential exposure
- Application and API security
- Container and Kubernetes configurations
- Logging and monitoring controls
- Potential paths to sensitive data
The key difference from a traditional infrastructure test is that much of the underlying infrastructure is operated by the cloud provider.
Your organisation is responsible for securing what it deploys and configures, while the provider is responsible for security aspects of the underlying cloud platform.
That distinction affects what can be tested and how the engagement must be planned.
Intrix provides penetration testing services across cloud environments, applications, APIs, networks and other technology environments.
The Shared Responsibility Model Changes the Scope
Cloud providers do not simply take responsibility for everything running in your environment.
The shared responsibility model determines which security controls belong to the provider and which belong to the customer.
This is one of the most important concepts to understand before commissioning cloud penetration testing.
For example, an organisation might assume that because its data is stored in AWS, Microsoft Azure or GCP, the cloud provider is responsible for securing access to that data.
That is not necessarily the case.
The provider may secure the underlying infrastructure, but your organisation remains responsible for things such as identities, permissions, configurations and workloads.
This creates opportunities for configuration mistakes.
A storage bucket might be unintentionally exposed. A cloud identity could have excessive privileges. A service account might have access to resources it does not require. A security group could allow unnecessary inbound traffic.
These are customer-side security issues.
A cloud penetration test therefore focuses heavily on the parts of the environment that your organisation controls.
AWS provides specific guidance around penetration testing of customer environments and identifies the services and activities that are permitted under its testing policy.
You can review the AWS Penetration Testing Policy before planning an AWS assessment.
What Does a Cloud Penetration Test Cover?
A properly scoped cloud penetration test should go beyond simply checking whether a resource is publicly accessible.
Identity and Access Management
Identity is central to cloud security.
Cloud environments commonly use roles, service accounts, API keys, federated identities and privileged administrative accounts.
Testing should assess whether these identities have appropriate permissions and whether an attacker could abuse legitimate access to reach resources they should not be able to access.
This can include testing for:
- Excessive permissions
- Weak role configurations
- Privilege escalation paths
- Poorly protected service accounts
- Exposed credentials
- Weak authentication controls
- Cross-account or cross-project access
An attacker does not always need to exploit a software vulnerability if an overly permissive identity gives them access to valuable resources.
Misconfiguration
Misconfiguration remains one of the major concerns in cloud security.
The cloud makes it relatively easy to create resources, change permissions and expose services.
That flexibility is useful for development and operations, but it can also create security gaps.
A penetration test may identify issues such as publicly accessible storage, overly permissive security groups, exposed management services or insecure network paths.
The objective is not simply to produce a list of configuration errors.
The tester should determine whether those weaknesses can actually contribute to an attack path.
Exposed Services
Cloud environments can expose applications, APIs, databases, management interfaces and other services to the internet.
An assessment can determine what is externally accessible and whether those services can be abused.
This is particularly important when organisations have grown their cloud environment over time.
Resources that were created for testing may remain active. Temporary access rules may never have been removed. Older applications may continue to use legacy authentication mechanisms.
Cloud penetration testing provides an opportunity to examine the environment from an attacker’s perspective.
Privilege Escalation
An attacker who gains an initial foothold will often try to increase their permissions.
Cloud penetration testing can investigate whether a compromised identity, workload or service account can be used to obtain greater privileges.
The tester may assess how permissions interact across different cloud services and whether seemingly limited access can be chained into broader control.
This is where manual testing becomes particularly valuable.
A scanner may identify an excessive permission. A penetration tester can investigate whether that permission creates an exploitable path.
Data Exposure
Cloud environments frequently contain sensitive information.
Depending on the organisation, this could include customer information, financial records, intellectual property, credentials, application data or business documents.
Testing can examine whether an attacker who gains access to a cloud resource could reach information outside their intended permissions.
The goal is to demonstrate realistic impact without unnecessarily accessing or extracting sensitive information.
AWS, Azure and GCP: What Changes?
The principles of cloud penetration testing are similar across providers, but the architecture and security controls differ.
AWS
AWS environments commonly involve services such as EC2, S3, IAM, VPC, Lambda, RDS and EKS.
A cloud penetration test may therefore examine IAM roles, S3 permissions, network controls, exposed EC2 services, Lambda permissions, API Gateway configurations and paths between AWS accounts.
AWS permits customers to conduct penetration tests against many of their own AWS resources without prior approval, but its policy contains specific permitted services and prohibited activities. Testing must follow AWS’s security testing terms.
Review the AWS Penetration Testing Policy before an engagement begins.
Microsoft Azure
Azure environments introduce services and controls including Azure Virtual Machines, App Services, Azure Functions, Entra ID, storage, virtual networks and APIs.
Identity is particularly important because Entra ID can sit at the centre of access to cloud applications and resources.
Testing may examine authentication, Conditional Access, permissions, application configurations and paths between identities and cloud resources.
Microsoft states that customers do not need prior approval for penetration testing against their own Azure resources, but customers and authorised third parties must comply with Microsoft’s penetration testing Rules of Engagement.
The Microsoft Azure penetration testing guidance provides the current requirements and rules for testing Azure environments.
Google Cloud Platform
GCP uses its own identity, networking, storage and project structures.
Testing may include IAM permissions, service accounts, Cloud Storage, Compute Engine, VPC configurations, Kubernetes environments and cross-project access.
Google states that customers do not need to notify Google before conducting penetration testing against their own Cloud Platform projects, provided testing follows Google’s terms and only affects the customer’s projects.
The Google Cloud penetration testing guidance provides further information about testing customer projects.
The provider-specific rules are another reason cloud penetration testing should be properly scoped before testing begins.
Why Cloud Misconfiguration Matters
Cloud environments can change quickly.
Development teams can deploy infrastructure through Infrastructure as Code. Administrators can modify permissions through management consoles. Applications can automatically create or remove resources.
This creates a moving security boundary.
A configuration that was secure six months ago may no longer reflect the current architecture.
That is why cloud security cannot rely entirely on the assumption that an environment was configured correctly when it was first deployed.
Regular assessment can help identify changes that introduce new exposure.
A vulnerability scanner or cloud security posture management tool can help identify known configuration weaknesses.
Penetration testing adds another layer by asking a different question:
Can an attacker actually use these weaknesses to achieve something they should not be able to achieve?
That distinction is important.
For example, an overly permissive IAM policy may appear concerning in isolation. A penetration tester can investigate whether it can be chained with another weakness to access sensitive resources or escalate privileges.
Cloud Penetration Testing vs Cloud Security Auditing
Cloud penetration testing and cloud security auditing are related but different activities.
A cloud security audit generally assesses configuration and controls against defined benchmarks or frameworks.
A penetration test attempts to validate whether weaknesses can be exploited.
Intrix’s cloud security auditing services cover areas including IAM, network security, data protection, logging and monitoring, container security and cloud architecture across AWS, Azure and GCP.
The two approaches can work together.
An audit can identify configuration gaps across a broad environment.
A penetration test can then focus on the most important systems and determine whether those gaps create practical attack paths.
What to Expect When Scoping a Cloud Pen Test
A good engagement begins before any testing takes place.
The scope should clearly define:
- Cloud provider and accounts or subscriptions
- Applications and workloads
- IP ranges and domains
- APIs
- Cloud services
- Test accounts and credentials
- Production versus non-production environments
- Permitted testing techniques
- Testing windows
- Sensitive systems that must be excluded
- Data handling requirements
- Rules of engagement
- Reporting requirements
Authenticated testing should also be considered.
Testing with legitimate credentials can reveal weaknesses that an unauthenticated external assessment cannot see.
For example, a tester may discover that a normal user can access an administrative function or that a compromised service account has excessive permissions.
AWS, Azure and GCP all have specific rules governing security testing, so those requirements should be incorporated into the engagement plan.
What Should the Report Include?
A useful cloud penetration testing report should explain more than which vulnerabilities were found.
It should show how the vulnerabilities affect the organisation.
A strong report typically includes:
- Executive summary
- Scope and methodology
- Risk-rated findings
- Technical evidence
- Attack paths
- Business impact
- Affected cloud resources
- Exploitation details
- Remediation recommendations
- Prioritised actions
- Retesting results where applicable
The report should be useful to both technical teams and management.
A security engineer needs enough detail to fix the issue.
A board or executive team needs to understand what the issue means for business risk.
The two audiences require different levels of detail, but they should receive the same underlying assessment.
When Should You Perform Cloud Penetration Testing?
Cloud penetration testing should not be treated as a one-off exercise.
It is particularly useful after major architectural changes, cloud migrations, new application releases or significant identity and access changes.
AWS security guidance recommends penetration testing when applications undergo major changes or new functionality is introduced.
Australian organisations should also consider testing as part of broader security assurance, particularly where cloud environments support sensitive information, critical operations or regulated workloads.
The appropriate frequency depends on risk, environment complexity and change velocity.
How Intrix Can Help
Intrix provides penetration testing services across cloud environments, applications, APIs, networks and other critical systems.
For AWS, Azure and GCP environments, testing can focus on the areas that create realistic attack paths, including identity and access management, cloud configuration, exposed services, privilege escalation and data exposure.
Intrix also provides cloud security auditing services covering AWS, Azure and GCP environments, including IAM, network security, data protection, logging and monitoring, container security and cloud architecture.
The objective is not simply to identify cloud security weaknesses. It is to determine which weaknesses an attacker could exploit, demonstrate the potential impact and provide practical remediation guidance.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is cloud penetration testing?
Cloud penetration testing is an authorised security assessment of cloud infrastructure, applications, identities and workloads. It simulates realistic attack techniques to identify exploitable weaknesses such as misconfigurations, excessive permissions, exposed services, privilege escalation paths and data access issues across platforms such as AWS, Azure and GCP.
How is cloud penetration testing different from traditional penetration testing?
Cloud penetration testing places greater emphasis on cloud configuration, identity, permissions and provider-specific services. The shared responsibility model also changes the scope because the cloud provider secures parts of the underlying platform while the customer remains responsible for its own configurations, identities, applications and workloads.
Do AWS, Azure and GCP allow penetration testing?
Generally, yes, but each provider has rules governing what customers and authorised third parties can test. AWS permits testing of many customer resources without prior approval, Microsoft permits testing of owned Azure resources under its Rules of Engagement, and Google permits testing of customer projects subject to its terms.
What is the most common cloud security issue?
Cloud misconfiguration is a major source of security exposure because incorrectly configured storage, identities, network controls and other resources can unintentionally expose systems or data. However, the specific risk varies between environments. Penetration testing helps determine whether a configuration weakness can form part of a realistic attack path.
