Understanding Cloud Identity Security: Risks, Solutions, and Best Practices

What is Cloud Identity Security?

Cloud identity security is the practice of protecting digital identities and the cloud infrastructure and data they control from unauthorized access or misuse. This comprehensive approach involves implementing identity and access control mechanisms to manage access for human users (e.g., developers), service accounts, application identities, and other entities interacting with cloud services.

The Evolution from Traditional to Cloud Identity Management

Historically, identity security was primarily managed on-premises. All identities originated from a single, easily controlled source, maintained via in-house servers and software. However, the cost, inflexibility, and scalability limitations of self-hosted, on-premises servers became problematic, leading to cloud adoption and, subsequently, federated identities. This shift enabled tens to thousands of human and machine identities to access an organization’s multi-cloud environment efficiently.

Organizations transitioned from traditional directory services, like Microsoft Active Directory (AD), to cloud-native identity management services better suited for the cloud’s distributed, dynamic nature, such as Microsoft Entra ID. These services facilitated highly scalable, cross-domain identity management and enabled easy integration with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) platforms. Furthermore, they allowed organizations to implement concepts like single sign-on (SSO) across multiple environments.

However, the cloud’s dynamic nature also introduces risks, allowing developers to rapidly provision and decommission resources. This can lead to misconfigured access controls, as exemplified by the ransomware attack on cybersecurity giant Fortinet. This incident resulted in the theft of 440 GB of files from Fortinet’s S3 bucket and the release of the instance’s credentials on a hacker forum, giving other hackers access to the data.

Common Cloud Identity Security Risks

The Fortinet incident underscores the risks inherent in cloud-native solutions. These risks can expose organizations to cyber threats and business disruptions. Common identity security risks include:

• Over-permissioning: Granting users or services more permissions than required. This can lead to privilege escalation vulnerabilities and expand the attack surface.
• Identity Sprawl: The creation of multiple unsynchronized accounts for a single user across various cloud services. This makes it difficult to track activities within the cloud environment.
• Shadow Assets and Access: The proliferation of unknown, unauthorized, or, over-permissioned cloud identities and assets. Unmonitored accounts can cause catastrophic damage if breached.
• Weak Authentication: Relying solely on weak, easily compromised authentication methods like easily guessed passwords. These systems are vulnerable to credential theft and brute force attacks.

Identity Security vs. IAM, and Zero Trust

• Identity Security vs. Identity and Access Management (IAM): Identity security is a broad practice that focuses on protecting all aspects of digital identities, including access control, identity lifecycle management, threat detection, and compliance. IAM is a narrower subset of identity security. It focuses on managing access to resources, providing tools for authentication, authorization, and access control using methods like role-based access control (RBAC) and multi-factor authentication (MFA).

• Identity Security vs. Zero Trust: Zero Trust operates on the principle of “never trust, always verify.” It verifies every user, device, and access attempt, regardless of location, and extends beyond identity security to protect devices, workloads, and networks. While identity security is crucial for Zero Trust, Zero Trust represents a broader security model that constantly validates and protects against potential breaches.

How Identity Security Works in the Cloud

Cloud identity security typically involves these stages:

1. Discovery and mapping: Scan the cloud environment to identify all human and non-human identities. Map the relationships between identities and cloud resources, creating an inventory of access permissions and identifying any orphaned accounts.
2. Analysis and risk assessment: Analyze the risk associated with each identity based on access scope and permissions. Evaluate effective permissions, identify excessive permissions, and assess the overall risk level.
3. Policy creation and enforcement: Create and implement access control policies to secure identities, using least-privilege access policies and role-based access control. Implement conditional access and enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA).
4. Continuous monitoring and detection: Continuously monitor identity-related activity for suspicious or risky behavior. Implement real-time monitoring, set up alerts for abnormal behavior, and scan for exposed secrets.
5. Threat analysis and response: Identify and respond to identity-based threats using advanced analytics. Correlate identity risks with other security data, conduct attack path analysis, and respond to threats by adjusting access controls or rotating credentials.
6. Remediation and optimization: Remediate identity risks and optimize access controls to prevent future incidents. Revoke unnecessary access rights, rotate exposed credentials, and implement just-in-time (JIT) access.
7. Reporting and compliance: Generate detailed reports on identity security posture and ensure compliance with relevant standards (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA). Provide auditable logs of all identity related activities.
8. Continuous improvement: Regularly review and update identity policies, conduct security assessments, and stay informed on new attack vectors. Educate users on best practices.

Cloud Identity Security and Regulatory Compliance

Cloud identity security is essential for complying with various regulatory standards and industry frameworks. These standards focus on protecting sensitive data, managing access controls, and maintaining secure environments.

1. Regulatory Standards:

   • GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation): Requires organizations to control access to personal data via secure identity management.
   • HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act): Mandates that healthcare organizations secure electronic protected health information (ePHI) through mechanisms like role-based access controls and strong authentication.
   • PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard): Specifies strict access control measures to secure cardholder data, including least privilege access and secure management of authentication.
   • SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act): Financial institutions must protect against unauthorized access and fraud with strong identity security controls and monitoring.

2. IAM Compliance Controls:

   • Access Control: Compliance standards typically mandate least privilege and ensure users only have access to required systems and data.
   • Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): MFA is often a requirement for verifying identities accessing sensitive resources.
   • Audit Trails: Regulations commonly require detailed audit logs of identity-related activities.

3. Compliance Frameworks:

   • NIST Cybersecurity Framework: Provides guidelines on securing identities, including access control, authentication, and identity management.
   • ISO/IEC 27001: Enforces identity security as part of its information security management systems.
   • CIS Controls: Emphasize identity and access management as a key security control mechanism, ensuring that user access and entitlements are carefully controlled and audited for compliance.

4. Cloud Provider Shared Responsibility:

   • Cloud providers secure the underlying infrastructure and platform. Customers are responsible for configuring and managing identities within the cloud environment, including setting up IAM roles and ensuring MFA is enforced.

5. Third-Party Assessments and Certifications:

   • SOC 2: Ensures that identity security controls meet standards for security, confidentiality, and privacy in cloud environments.
   • ISO 27001 certification: Demonstrates that an organization has implemented robust identity security controls aligned with international standards

Cloud identity security is crucial to achieving and maintaining compliance with various regulations and standards. Implementing strong identity security practices helps organizations avoid non-compliance and ensures that cloud environments meet the necessary security standards, protecting sensitive data and protecting user identities as required by law.

Wiz’s Approach to Cloud Identity Security

Managing IAM, detecting identity threats, and implementing best practices can be complex, especially in multi-cloud environments.

Wiz CIEM is designed to provide comprehensive multi-cloud identity governance in a unified dashboard that integrates with Wiz CNAPP to offer code-to-cloud visibility into misconfigured permissions, identity sprawl, and other identity security risks. The solution detects and automatically addresses these risks, uncovering toxic configurations that can lead to cyber threats. Wiz CIEM also discovers exposed secrets and assists in regularly reviewing access policies to eliminate unnecessary permissions.