What is a Cloud Security Assessment? (And How Do We Do One?)

Cloud security assessments measure the effectiveness of existing security controls so teams get a complete picture of their gaps in misconfiguration detection, access management, and threat monitoring. These assessments should benchmark real-world attack paths — from privilege escalation to overly permissive IAM policies and lateral movement enabled by unsecured workloads. How do those issues stand up to current defenses? 

To conduct a realistic assessment, teams should move beyond compliance checklists, but to what? They’ll need to validate runtime security, test responses, and quantify risk with specific methodologies that map defenses to capabilities. They can also get a 1-one-1 assessment from the Upwind team. Want to go it solo? We’re breaking down the steps to covering your cloud security practices across domains.

The Basics: What is a Cloud Security Assessment?

A cloud security assessment is the systematic evaluation of an organization’s cloud security posture. What does that include? It means looking at: 

• Cloud infrastructure: Examining misconfigurations, network security, identity and access management (IAM), storage security, and workload protection. This includes evaluating whether VMs, containers, and serverless functions are hardened, and if cloud-native security controls (like security groups and encryption settings) are implemented.

• Application security in the cloud: Assessing how applications deployed in the cloud are secured. That includes API security, software supply chain risks, CI/CD pipeline vulnerabilities, and runtime security of cloud-native applications. This also includes checking for application-layer misconfigurations in Kubernetes, service meshes, or cloud-based WAFs.

• Cloud services and data protection: Evaluating the security of managed cloud services (e.g., databases, object storage, serverless functions, and identity providers) to make sure they are configured correctly and that data protection measures like encryption, backup policies, and access controls gel with best practices.

The goal of a cloud security assessment is to identify potential security vulnerabilities and verify compliance with regulatory requirements. Cloud security assessments should be continuous, but their depth and methodologies will depend on the organization’s security maturity and risk tolerance. Typically, teams look to cloud security assessments:

• On a continual basis: For the most mature organizations, security is ongoing. Continuous posture management may involve using Cloud Security and Posture Management (CSPM) or Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) tools to check for misconfigurations, unauthorized access, and compliance drift in real time.
• On a periodic basis, quarterly or annually: Periodic assessments don’t take the place of continual monitoring — they augment them. Many organizations monitor changing cloud conditions continually and also conduct manual testing, like penetration testing, and conduct policy reviews, or perform required compliance audits, like for SOC 2, PCC DSS or ISO 27001, when required.
• When an event occurs: Organizations can also look to a cloud security assessment after a breach to identify root causes and prevent recurrence, or ahead of a required third-party audit. They may also benefit from an assessment after a large-scale migration or expansion into a multi-cloud or hybrid environment.

Types of Cloud Security Assessments

With different timing and actions, it’s obvious that not all cloud security assessments are created equal.

The different types of cloud security assessments include all of the following ways of testing and reviewing cloud security: 

• Vulnerability Assessment: Identifies potential flaws and weaknesses in a cloud infrastructure through scanning and analysis, allowing for proactive patching and mitigation of vulnerabilities. 
• Penetration Testing: Simulates real-world attacks to identify exploitable vulnerabilities by actively attempting to breach the system, providing a more comprehensive understanding of security gaps. 
• Compliance Audit: Verifies adherence to relevant industry regulations and standards like HIPAA, GDPR, or PCI DSS by reviewing cloud configurations and security practices against compliance requirements. 
• Access Control Review: Evaluates the effectiveness of user authentication and authorization mechanisms, including password management, multi-factor authentication, and access controls to cloud resources. 
• Data Encryption Assessment: Checks the implementation and strength of data encryption protocols used to protect sensitive information stored in the cloud. 
• Network Security Evaluation: Assesses the security of cloud network infrastructure, including firewalls, network segmentation, and virtual private networks (VPNs). 
• Incident Response Readiness Assessment: Evaluates an organization’s ability to detect, contain, and recover from security incidents in the cloud environment. 
• Continuous Monitoring: Ongoing evaluation of cloud activity through logging and monitoring tools to identify potential security threats and anomalies in real-time. 

Here’s how they differ:

Assessment Type	Finds Vulnerabilities	Tests Exploitable Weaknesses	Ensures Compliance	Evaluates Access and Identity	Assesses Data and Network Security	Tests Incident Response	Best For:
Vulnerability Assessment	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	Proactive risk mitigation
Penetration Testing	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	Simulating real attacks
Compliance Audit	No	No	Yes	Sometimes	Sometimes	No	Meeting regulatory needs
Access Control Review	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	Identity & access security
Data Encryption Assessment	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	Data protection
Network Security Evaluation	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	Cloud network security
Incident Response Readiness	Yes	No	Sometimes	No	Yes	No	Incident preparedness
Continuous Monitoring	Yes	No	Sometimes	No	No	Yes	Continuous security oversight

Not all cloud security assessments provide a complete picture of risk. Some are proactive, helping prevent attacks, while others are reactive, testing how systems respond under real-world conditions. Depending on your security maturity, regulatory needs, and risk exposure, you may need just one or a combination of assessments. Here are a few instances when combining approaches works best.

Vulnerability Assessment + Penetration Testing

Use it when teams need to identify flaws and test how easily attackers could exploit them. It helps validate whether previous fixes from vulnerability scans were truly effective.

Compliance Audit + Access Control Review

Use it in regulated industries when teams need to prove security best practices around user authentication, IAM policies, and least privilege access.

Data Encryption Assessment + Network Security Evaluation

Use it when securing sensitive data in transit and at rest, when teams need to ensure that encryption, VPNs, and network isolation are configured correctly.

Incident Response Readiness + Continuous Monitoring

Use it for end-to-end visibility into threats and for proactive incident detection to prevent breaches before they cause damage. This combination works well for SOC teams and large enterprises.

Penetration Testing + Compliance Audit 

Use it to prove security effectiveness beyond just meeting compliance requirements. This combination ensures regulatory security controls actually defend against attacks.

How Do We Conduct Our Own Cloud Security Assessment?

For organizations looking to self-assess their cloud security, the best starting point is a general security posture assessment that evaluates misconfigurations, access control, data protection, and network security. This type of assessment provides actionable insights without requiring penetration testing expertise or specialized compliance knowledge.

Unlike a compliance checklist, which helps teams meet regulatory requirements, this cloud security assessment focuses on real-world risk reduction, and it doesn’t follow any specific certification requirement.

1. Cloud Account & Identity Security

• Review IAM policies to ensure least-privilege access.
• Check for unused, overprivileged, or shared user accounts.
• Enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all admin accounts.
• Audit API keys and service accounts to limit unnecessary access.

2. Cloud Configuration & Misconfigurations

• Use a Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tool to scan for misconfigurations.
• Validate encryption settings for storage, databases, and sensitive workloads.
• Enable logging and monitoring (e.g., AWS CloudTrail, GCP Cloud Audit Logs).
• Review default security group settings — deny unnecessary inbound access.

3. Data Protection & Encryption

• Confirm all sensitive data is encrypted at rest and in transit.
• Check backup and disaster recovery configurations for critical data.
• Audit access logs to detect unusual activity around sensitive files.
• Implement data classification to enforce stronger security policies where needed.

4. Network Security & Segmentation

• Ensure firewalls and security groups follow deny-by-default principles.
• Restrict public-facing services — minimize open ports and IP whitelisting.
• Review VPC and subnet configurations to enforce network segmentation.
• Validate Zero Trust policies — make sure that internal services require authentication.

5. Threat Detection & Incident Readiness

• Enable cloud-native threat detection tools (e.g., AWS GuardDuty, Azure Security Center).
• Test incident response processes — how quickly can teams detect and react?
• Review SIEM logs and alerts to understand normal vs. suspicious activity.
• Enable audit trails and secure them against tampering.

6. Application & API Security

• Scan containerized workloads and serverless functions for vulnerabilities.
• Audit API gateways and authentication mechanisms.
• Test for insecure API endpoints — restrict public access where possible.
• Enable runtime security monitoring to find threats in active workloads.

7. Continuous Security Monitoring & Automation

• Implement continuous scanning for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
• Automate security policy enforcement using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) validation.
• Regularly review and update security policies based on evolving threats.
• Set up automated alerts for unusual activity or policy violations.

Benefits of a Cloud Security Assessment for Cybersecurity

What are the end gains of any cloud security assessment? Typically, teams leapfrog ahead on a number of factors. Here are the key insights that assessment can provide:

Benefit	Why It Matters
Understand how sensitive data is processed and shared	Organizations will understand the state of security for their sensitive information so they can protect it better moving forward.
Faster recovery from business interruptions	Assessing cloud security controls means that organizations understand the interplay of defensive tools and can recover from interruptions faster.
Ensures cloud security tools meet industry benchmarks and regulatory requirements	Many organizations need their cloud infrastructure to comply with external audits and regulations. A security assessment makes it happen.
Implement the right risk management policies	Managing attack risk can feel as ephemeral as the cloud itself. After assessment, they’ll have a greater understanding of where critical risks lie, and where resources should be allocated best.
Improved organizational resilience	Because an assessment identifies issues and evaluates controls, organizations that conduct one ultimately have the chance to improve their resilience against attack.
Reduced risk from accidental misconfigurations	It’s easy to misconfigure cloud environments. An assessment can ensure that these misconfigurations are found and resolved.

Key Components and Factors to Consider in Cloud Security Assessment

Because there are multiple approaches a cloud security assessment might take, it helps to hone methods to fit primary objectives. So once you’ve got a checklist in hand and a sense of the benefits your team most prizes, the final step is to ask the following questions about what the details, logistics, and tools of an assessment you conduct should look like. 

• Do I know what my present state looks like?: Organizations have some security measures already in place. Knowing what’s currently happening is crucial prior to conducting an assessment, especially because it might indicate how security needs to change. 

• What is the desired future state?: Based on what the current state is, organizations should also develop an ideal future state that they want to achieve following the assessment. 
• How much time do we want to commit to an assessment?: Like compliance audits, cloud security assessments can be extensive and take time to complete. Organizations need to ensure they have the resources and time necessary to conduct the examination they want, to get the results that will serve them, without sacrificing progress on other security initiatives. 
• What kinds of costs do we want to commit?: From tools to time, resources require money. Teams will want to determine costs based on the scope and complexity of the assessment they need.
• How deep will we go into each area? Every cloud security assessment spends some time considering the following factors. How much granularity does your team need in each area?

Cloud security priorities dictate new tooling required to make an assessment happen. The primary tools chosen include:

1. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM): CSPM tools automate the identification and remediation of risks across cloud infrastructures. As part of this, they offer continuous monitoring and compliance to help organizations maintain a secure cloud. CSPM tools scan the cloud for misconfigurations and compliance violations, offering insights into security weaknesses.
2. Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP): CWPPs emphasize securing workloads across cloud environments. They’re designed to protect hosts and containerized applications against threats using runtime protection, vulnerability management, and network segmentation. CWPPs are useful for resolving vulnerabilities as part of the cloud security assessment. 
3. Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB): A CASB serves as an intermediary between users and cloud service providers, enforcing security policies around data access and cloud application usage. CASBs also support encryption and threat prevention, and are helpful in managing cloud access in a secure manner. CASBs help align cloud usage with security policies, mitigating the risk of data leakage and unauthorized access.
4. Cloud Detection and Response (CDR): Cloud detection and response tools are designed to detect and respond to threats in cloud environments. Typically, they use a combination of advanced analytics and threat intelligence to identify suspicious activities and often provide real-time alerts as well as automated responses. 
5. Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM): Cloud infrastructure entitlement management tools manage access entitlements and permissions in cloud environments with the goal of preventing excessive privileges. CIEMs help enforce the principle of least privilege and reduce the risk of unauthorized access as well as data breaches. CIEMs provide intelligence about permission configurations and user activities, which results in better overall control over cloud resources. 
6. Data Security Posture Management (DSPM): Data security posture management solutions help monitor and secure data across cloud environments. When used as part of a cloud security assessment, they’re powerful tools to identify and resolve risks related to data storage, access, and transfer. These tools help organizations detect misconfigurations, enforce data protection policies, and ensure compliance with data governance standards.
7. API Security: API security offerings typically emphasize authentication, authorization, traffic management, and threat detection as they relate to APIs. They monitor traffic to detect and stop harmful activities like unauthorized access or data exfiltration. API protection tools also ensure that APIs comply with organizational security policies.

Upwind Combines Tools for Ongoing Cloud Security Monitoring

With API, CWPP, CDR, and CSPM components, Upwind protects cloud workloads across the software development lifecycle with or without a dedicated cloud security assessment. We’re also able to get organizations started right with a dedicated one-on-one assessment that identifies security strengths and gaps so teams can better hone solutions that are right for them.

Explore Upwind’s Cloud Security assessment today and find out the state of your cloud risk in under 5 minutes.

Frequently Asked Questions 

What is included in a cloud security assessment? 

A cloud security assessment typically includes evaluating aspects like data encryption at rest and in transit, strong access controls, multi-factor authentication, logging and monitoring configurations, security patching, incident response plans, compliance with relevant regulations, data backup and recovery strategies, vendor security assessments, and employee security training to ensure a robust cloud security posture.

In other words, it focuses on cloud architecture, and offers a roadmap for remediating gaps and maintaining high security standards for cloud deployments.

How long does a typical assessment take?

A typical cloud security assessment can take anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks to complete, depending on the complexity of the cloud environment, amount of cloud assets, and the depth of the assessment, with larger and more intricate cloud setups potentially requiring several weeks to fully evaluate. 

How do you handle multi-cloud environments? 

When conducting cloud security assessments in a multi-cloud environment, teams should utilize a centralized security posture management (CSPM) tool that allows them full visibility into all their cloud providers, from Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to Azure and AWS. They’ll also be able to standardize security policies across their clouds. While visibility is a key first step, teams will need multiple assessment processes as they move through their multi-cloud environment:

1. Inventory & Asset Discovery: Identify cloud services, workloads, and data across providers.
2. Access Controls & IAM: Review role-based access, least privilege, and MFA enforcement.
3. Network Security: Assess segmentation, firewall rules, and inter-cloud traffic protections.
4. Data Security: Evaluate encryption, data classification, and storage security policies.
5. Compliance & Governance: Align with regulatory frameworks (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, NIST).
6. Threat Detection & Logging: Verify logging, SIEM integrations, and anomaly detection.
7. Workload Security: Inspect VM/container hardening, patching, and runtime protection.
8. Identity Federation: Ensure secure authentication between cloud platforms.
9. CI/CD & DevSecOps:  Assess security in pipelines, IaC scanning, and shift-left practices.
10. Incident Response: Test multi-cloud breach detection and cross-platform response plans.