Access Control Strategies for Cloud Systems

👉 🔒 5 Steps To Secure Your Azure Cloud Connection 🔒 When securing your Azure cloud infrastructure, following best practices can significantly reduce your attack surface. Here are five key steps to enhance your security posture and protect your environment from unauthorized access. 🌐💡 🔑 Step ①: Avoid Public IP Exposure One of the most common security missteps is exposing Virtual Machines (VMs) directly to the internet via public IPs. Instead: ✅ Use Azure Bastion for secure, browser-based access to your VMs without exposing RDP/SSH. ✅ Deploy Azure Firewall, Private Endpoints, or VPN Gateways to control external access. ✅ Leverage DDoS protection to defend against large-scale attacks. 🔄 Step ②: Bastion NSG Rules – Lock It Down! By default, Azure Bastion allows connections to VMs using port 443 (TLS/SSL). However, configuring Network Security Groups (NSGs) correctly ensures your network remains secure: 🔹 Restrict inbound/outbound traffic to only essential services. 🔹 Ensure that Bastion subnets don’t allow inbound internet traffic except from trusted sources. 🔹 Audit NSG rules regularly for compliance and best practices. 🔐 Step ③: Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) for Permissions Proper role-based access control (RBAC) ensures users only have the permissions they truly need: 🚫 Avoid granting Contributor or Owner access to unnecessary users. 🔹 Use role assignments like Virtual Machine Reader and Network Card Reader for limited access. 🔹 Regularly review Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM) to enforce Just-In-Time (JIT) role elevation. 🚪 Step ④: Port Control – Don't Use Default Ports! Hackers scan well-known ports like 3389 (RDP) and 22 (SSH) to exploit vulnerabilities. Reduce risk by: ✅ Using Bastion tunneling instead of exposing these ports directly. ✅ Enforcing Azure Defender for Servers to detect unusual port activity. ✅ Implementing host-based firewalls to limit allowed IPs. ⏱️ Step ⑤: Just-In-Time (JIT) Access + Bastion = Secure Remote Connectivity To prevent always-open attack surfaces, Just-In-Time VM Access (JIT) helps: ⏳ Opening ports only when explicitly needed for a limited time. 🔑 Combining JIT with Bastion ensures zero-trust access principles are applied. 🛑 Reducing the window for potential brute-force attacks or unauthorized access attempts. 🚀 By implementing these best practices, your Azure environment will be more secure and resilient against threats while maintaining productivity. #CloudSecurity #Azure #Bastion #Cybersecurity #ITManagement #AzureNetworking #AzureSecurity #DataProtection #MicrosoftAzure #CloudComputing #TechTips #AzureTips #AzureTipOfTheDay #MicrosoftCloud

How Access Governance manages user access and permissions within IT systems ⬇️ ➡ Policy-Based Identity Lifecycle Management handles user identities and their associated access and permissions to your organization's IT systems based on predefined policies and rules. It involves the entire lifecycle of your user's identity, from onboarding to changes in roles or responsibilities and, finally, offboarding. ➡ Policy-Based Access Control is a key component of access governance, allowing your organization to assign permissions based on your organization's access policies. This prevents entitlement creep by ensuring users access only the resources necessary for their job. ➡ Organizations with complex enterprise systems require Identity Life Cycle Management solutions to control access for onboarding employees, contractors, and third parties. Any change to work assignments or departures from the organization requires immediate updates to security privileges in compliance with access policies to ensure your users only have access to what they need while removing access they don't need. ➡ Periodic access reviews are conducted based on policy-defined schedules. These reviews involve managers and data owners validating that users still require their assigned access. Any deviations or discrepancies can trigger actions based on your established policies. This process helps identify and rectify any instances of entitlement creep or ghost accounts. ➡ Automated provisioning and de-provisioning of user accounts simplify user access management, reducing the risk of ghost accounts lingering after employees depart. ➡ Periodic access certification campaigns involve managers and data owners verifying that users have appropriate access. This process helps prevent unauthorized access and ensures accountability. ➡ Access governance tools often include audit trails and monitoring capabilities that allow your organization to track and investigate suspicious activity, such as unwanted guests trying to access systems. #riskandcompliance #accesscontrols #accessgovernance #cybersecurity #acesscontrols

𝗢𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 (𝗢𝗖𝗖) suffered a recent cloud email breach, that highlighted critical vulnerabilities in email security and access management that have broader implications for all federally regulated institutions. 𝚂̲𝚞̲𝚖̲𝚖̲𝚊̲𝚛̲𝚢̲ ̲𝚘̲𝚏̲ ̲𝚝̲𝚑̲𝚎̲ ̲𝙾̲𝙲̲𝙲̲ ̲𝙱̲𝚛̲𝚎̲𝚊̲𝚌̲𝚑̲ ̲An attacker gained unauthorized access to a privileged administrative email account within the Microsoft environment. The breach went undetected for 8 months, during which sensitive government communications were silently exfiltrated. More than 150K email messages were compromised, affecting around 100 officials. The incident exposed critical shortcomings in access control enforcement, monitoring, and response protocols. 𝙺̲𝚎̲𝚢̲ ̲𝙵̲𝚊̲𝚒̲𝚕̲𝚞̲𝚛̲𝚎̲𝚜̲ ̲𝙸̲𝚍̲𝚎̲𝚗̲𝚝̲𝚒̲𝚏̲𝚒̲𝚎̲𝚍̲ 1. Overprivileged Access – An administrative account with wide mailbox visibility was compromised, facilitating prolonged data exfiltration. 2. Delayed Detection – Anomalous behavior went unnoticed for months, raising concerns about the efficacy of real-time monitoring and alerting. 3. Stale and Unlocked Service Accounts: There were no policies in place for password rotation, inactivity lockout, or login attempt lockout for service accounts, making them vulnerable to brute-force or credential stuffing attacks. 4. Unaddressed Internal Warnings – Known risks flagged in prior audits related to email and access security had not been remediated in time. 5. Insufficient Conditional Access Policy Enforcement – The compromised account, linked to Azure, bypassed MFA and geo restrictions due to a poorly enforced conditional access framework. VPN usage further masked malicious activity.   𝙻̲𝚎̲𝚜̲𝚜̲𝚘̲𝚗̲ ̲𝚕̲𝚎̲𝚊̲𝚛̲𝚗̲𝚎̲𝚍̲:̲ 1. Enforce Microsoft Conditional Access Policies – Ensure all accounts, including service accounts, are subject to robust Conditional Access, MFA, and geo-restrictions. 2. Tighten Access Control – Limit and monitor privileges of administrative and service accounts; apply just-in-time access models. 3. Audit and Harden Service Accounts – Eliminate hardcoded credentials, enforce regular password rotation, enable account lockouts after failed login attempts, and setinactivity thresholds. 4. Strengthen Detection – Invest in behavioral analytics, adaptive authentication, and cloud-native threat detection tools. 5. Review and Limit Privileges – Conduct a review of privileged accounts and implement RBAC and JIT access where possible. 6. Ensure compliance with secure baseline configurations like those in DHS CISA BOD 25-01 - Secure Cloud Baseline [SCuBA] (stated in OCC response) The 𝗢𝗖𝗖 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 is a cautionary tale—reactive controls alone are insufficient in today’s environment. Proactive hardening of identity, access, and cloud email infrastructure must be a top priority. https://lnkd.in/ef_4DQ3V

2024 State of Cloud Security Study Key Insights A great morning read from Datadog ‘analyzed security posture data from a sample of thousands of organizations that use AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.’ ↗️ Long-lived credentials -> remain a security risk, with 60% of AWS IAM users having access keys older than one year. Unused credentials are widespread, increasing attack surfaces across all cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP). Recommendation -> Shift to temporary, time-bound credentials & centralized identity management solutions. ↗️ Public access blocks on cloud storage increasing AWS S3 & Azure Blob Storage are increasingly using public access blocks, with S3 seeing 79% of buckets proactively secured. Recommendation -> Enable account-level public access blocks to minimize risks of accidental data exposure. ↗️ IMDSv2 adoption growing AWS EC2 instances enforcing IMDSv2 have grown from 25% to 47%, yet many instances remain vulnerable. Recommendation -> Enforce IMDSv2 across all EC2 instances & use regional settings for secure defaults. ↗️ Managed Kubernetes clusters Many clusters (almost 50% on AWS) expose APIs publicly, with insecure default configurations risking attacks. Recommendation -> Use private networks, enforce audit logs, & limit permissions on Kubernetes worker nodes. ↗️ 3rd-Party integrations pose supply chain risk 10% of third-party IAM roles are overprivileged, creating risks of AWS account takeover. Recommendation ->Limit permissions, enforce External IDs, & remove unused third-party roles. ↗️ Most cloud incidents caused by compromised cloud credentials Cloud incidents are often triggered by compromised credentials, particularly in AWS, Azure, & Entra ID environments. Patterns of Attack + Compromised identities + Escalation via GetFederationToken + Service enumeration + Reselling access + Persistence techniques Microsoft 365 -> Credential stuffing, bypassing MFA, & malicious OAuth apps for email exfiltration. Google Cloud -> Attackers leverage VPNs & proxies for crypto mining and follow common attack patterns. Recommendations -> Implement strong identity controls & monitor API changes that attackers may exploit. ↗️ Many cloud workloads are excessively privileged or run in risky configurations Overprivileged cloud workloads expose organizations to significant risks, including full account compromise & data breaches. Recommendation ->Enforce least privilege principles on all workloads. Use non-default service accounts with tailored permissions in Google Cloud. Avoid running production workloads in AWS Organization management accounts. The study shows improved adoption of secure cloud configurations -> better awareness + enforcement of secure defaults. However, risky credentials & common misconfigurations in cloud infrastructure remain significant entry points for attackers. P.s. use the info to strengthen your org cloud security posture. Full study report in the comment ⬇️ #cloudsecurity #cloudsec #cybersecurity