Your cloud may have many layers of security, for example, firewalls, identity access controls, encryption, monitoring systems, and security scanner automation. However, what happens if someone is trying to hack it?
Take one vulnerable identity and expose your sensitive data. Expose your API or misconfigure your storage service to leak information to the Internet without you knowing about it. Or let your cloud workload be hacked, and the attacker gets entry to your environment.
This is where the necessity of a cloud penetration test comes into play.
The essence of cloud penetration testing consists of the conducted tests showing how attacks can be performed against the cloud infrastructure or its services, applications, APIs, workloads, and security settings.
Classic penetration testing only shows that there are vulnerabilities in cloud resources, but cloud pen tests make clear how vulnerabilities can be exploited and how far the attacker can go.
Although cloud environments can be very complex, they can contain different cloud services, such as public cloud services, container technologies, serverless applications, APIs, or hybrid IT environments.
What should your company pay attention to when performing cloud tests?
The Importance of Cloud Pen Testing
The widespread adoption of cloud technology has greatly increased the size of the attack surface. According to the findings from Google’s H2 2025 Threat Horizons study, weak or missing credentials were responsible for 47.1% of cloud incidents throughout the first half of 2025, with misconfigurations causing 29.4% and API/UI breaches accounting for 11.8%.
As is evident from these statistics, there is no need for a hacker to exploit a new vulnerability; ordinary access and weak authentication are enough for cloud attacks to succeed.
Cloud penetration testing allows organizations to avoid theoretical risks by answering questions such as:
- Can an unauthorized attacker get access?
- Can the hacker escalate any compromised credentials?
- Can an exposed API be exploited?
- Can an attack on one workload be extended to another?
- Can information be obtained from the cloud?
- Will security systems be able to detect and prevent the attack?
1. Identity and Access Management
IAM should be among the priorities during cloud penetration testing. Unlike traditional approaches, cloud computing heavily emphasizes identity instead of perimeter-based security. In a cloud setting, each user, program, container, virtual machine, application, API, service account, and even workload can have split rights. Therefore, the penetration tests must focus on the following aspects:
- Excessive rights
- Weak or non-existing Multi-Factor Authentication
- Unused and orphan accounts
- Options for privilege escalation
- Too permissive roles and permissions
- Long-lasting credentials and access keys
- Permissions of service accounts
- Cross-account and cross-project access
- Credential leak
The Cloud Security Alliance report of 2025 revealed that insecure identity and risky permissions are identified as the greatest security threat in the cloud by 59% of companies surveyed.
2. Misconfigurations in Cloud Computing
Misconfiguration is still among the most prevalent cloud security issues. A service may be secure on paper, but there can be issues with its implementation. Attacks can happen through publicly accessible storage, permissive security groups, exposed management interfaces, insecure network routes, and misconfigured cloud services. Therefore, cloud pen testing should check the following:
- Publicly exposed resources
- Access permissions to storage
- Security groups and firewall rules
- Network segmentation
- Management interfaces
- Cloud service configuration
- Logs and monitoring configuration
- Backup exposure
- Secrets and credentials that are stored in the wrong places
It is important to realize that it is not enough to identify configuration mistakes: it is also necessary to check what kinds of misconfigurations can be used in combination with each other for maximum effectiveness.
3. Cloud APIs and Web Applications
APIs are frequently considered the basic foundation of contemporary cloud computing application systems, as well as the main focus during penetration testing.
Modern applications increasingly rely on REST APIs, GraphQL, serverless architecture, microservices, and third-party applications to achieve inter-system communication.
The presence of flaws in an API may allow intruders to bypass authentication, get access to another user’s data, change the information, and perform other types of operations.
Assuming that APIs contain multiple vulnerabilities, the main aim of the cloud pen test must be to check for such vulnerabilities as
- Authentication
- Authorization
- Uncontrolled exposure of data
- Accessing APIs too fast
- API key management
- Validation of input data
- Management of sessions
- Business logic problems
- Serverless applications
- Configuration of the API gateway
According to the 2025 report regarding cloud security published by Palo Alto Networks, the majority of organizations, around 40.7%, reported a sudden increase in the number of API-related attacks, and 52.6% of companies mentioned poor usage of IAM practices as one of the main problems and a source of possible data leaks. Thus, it is evident that API testing has rather great significance in the current cloud pen testing process.
4. Network Design and Segmentation
Cloud-based networks are constantly in flux, making it easy for computing resources to be added, moved, expanded, and connected. Penetration testing will show if network design ensures that the cybercriminal’s movements are limited after their initial success. Among other things, testing must determine what virtual networks consist of
- Security groups
- Control lists for network access
- Anything that can be accessed via the internet
- Private communication channels
- VPN connection details
- Information-sharing connections
- Internal networks and communications
- Segmentation of networks
5. Data Protection and Storage
Sensitive data is the primary goal of cloud attacks. It needs to be determined whether the cybercriminal, once they have compromised some account, workload, API, or storage service, is capable of accessing data they should not. The main aspects of the process include:
- Rights in terms of object storage
- Database access control
- Configuration of encryption
- Backup facilities
- Policies concerning data access
- Management of secrets
- Access to data of other accounts
- Openly accessible information
- The route data takes to be transferred outside the network
The main aim is to check if security measures keep sensitive data safe after the attacker makes their first step into the system.
6. Containers, Kubernetes, and Serverless Workloads
Container technology, Kubernetes, and serverless environments are increasingly common in cloud-based architecture worldwide.
These technologies create new vulnerabilities that attackers may exploit. For instance, if containers aren’t properly isolated, a hacker could gain access to the environment variables, code, APIs, and workloads of the system. Cloud penetration testing must include:
- Configuration of containers
- Vulnerabilities of images
- Kubernetes RBAC
- Open Kubernetes APIs
- Secrets
- Service accounts
- Risks of escape from containers
- Workload isolation
- Permissions in serverless environment
- Level of access of functions to each other
The process should be focused on real attacks while doing so disrupting the normal processes involved in production.
7. Detection, Logging, and Response
Penetration testing is not just about showcasing the risks. It is equally important to assess the detection and response of the organization to the attack that was just demonstrated.
Such activities that should be checked include abuse of credentials, elevation of privileges, odd calls to the API, as well as unusual access to data.
8. Attack Pathways and Privilege Elevation
No single vulnerability tells the whole story.The most useful part of cloud pen testing is learning how various weaknesses interact.
Guidelines for Successful Cloud Pen Testing
Cloud pen testing should start with an explicitly defined scope. Organizations need to determine which accounts, programs, cloud services, IP ranges, APIs, and environments are under scrutiny.
It is also crucial to learn the provider’s rules before proceeding with testing. For instance, AWS allows customers to conduct pen tests involving certain AWS systems without receiving prior permission. The only limitation is that the testing must be in accordance with AWS’ security testing limits and policies. High-quality testing should involve:
- Reconnaissance
- Configuration testing
- Identity testing
- Testing of applications and APIs
- Attack path validation
- Detection testing
- Remediation validation
Conclusion
The cloud offers great flexibility and scalability, but these very features can cause problems in terms of security. The best practices in cloud pen testing do not involve simply finding vulnerabilities; they simulate how the hacker would operate in the cloud, misusing identities, taking advantage of misconfigurations, compromising APIs, escalating privileges, etc.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is cloud pen testing?
Cloud pen testing is an authorized security assessment that simulates real-world attacks against cloud infrastructure, applications, APIs, identities, networks, storage, containers, and other cloud resources.
What are the main focus areas of cloud pen testing?
The major focus areas include IAM, cloud configuration, network security, APIs, web applications, storage, containers, Kubernetes, serverless functions, secrets, and security monitoring.
How is cloud pen testing different from vulnerability scanning?
Vulnerability scanning primarily identifies potential weaknesses. Pen testing goes further by safely validating whether vulnerabilities can actually be exploited and determining the potential impact of successful exploitation.
