Book Image

Cloud Auditing Best Practices

By : Shinesa Cambric, Michael Ratemo
5 (1)
Book Image

Cloud Auditing Best Practices

5 (1)
By: Shinesa Cambric, Michael Ratemo

Overview of this book

As more and more companies are moving to cloud and multi-cloud environments, being able to assess the compliance of these environments properly is becoming more important. But in this fast-moving domain, getting the most up-to-date information is a challenge—so where do you turn? Cloud Auditing Best Practices has all the information you’ll need. With an explanation of the fundamental concepts and hands-on walk-throughs of the three big cloud players, this book will get you up to speed with cloud auditing before you know it. After a quick introduction to cloud architecture and an understanding of the importance of performing cloud control assessments, you’ll quickly get to grips with navigating AWS, Azure, and GCP cloud environments. As you explore the vital role an IT auditor plays in any company’s network, you'll learn how to successfully build cloud IT auditing programs, including using standard tools such as Terraform, Azure Automation, AWS Policy Sentry, and many more. You’ll also get plenty of tips and tricks for preparing an effective and advanced audit and understanding how to monitor and assess cloud environments using standard tools. By the end of this book, you will be able to confidently apply and assess security controls for AWS, Azure, and GCP, allowing you to independently and effectively confirm compliance in the cloud.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Part 1: The Basics of Cloud Architecture and Navigating – Understanding Enterprise Cloud Auditing Essentials
4
Part 2: Cloud Security and IT Controls
8
Part 3: Executing an Effective Enterprise Cloud Audit Plan

Assessing data security policies

Data within an enterprise may be one of the most essential assets that an organization owns, and ensuring that any sensitive data is properly protected through means such as encryption, data masking, and logging of changes to data are likely to be critical controls. In this walk-through, we’ll look at assessing adherence to data security policies in AWS and Azure by checking to see that logging and appropriate levels of encryption have been enabled.

AWS

One primary way to check adherence to data security policies within AWS is by reviewing findings in the AWS Security Hub. To review these findings, we will need to perform the following steps:

  1. Navigate and log on to the AWS Console.
  2. Select the Security, Identity, & Compliance service.
  3. Select Security Hub.

Within the Security Hub report, we can review a list of findings that relate to some of the standards and frameworks that were referenced in Chapter 2, Effective...