{"id":11671,"date":"2012-10-05T15:38:06","date_gmt":"2012-10-05T15:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/cloud-security-audit\/"},"modified":"2022-07-22T22:15:22","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T22:15:22","slug":"cloud-security-audit","status":"publish","type":"definition","link":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/26543\/cloudaudit","title":{"rendered":"Cloud Security Audit"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span id=\"what_does_cloud_security_audit_mean\">What Does Cloud Security Audit Mean?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>A cloud security audit is a process used to assess the security posture of a cloud environment. This assessment can be performed manually or with automated vulnerability and pen testing (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/34804\/vapt-vulnerability-assessment-and-penetration-testing\">VAPT<\/a>) tools. The goal of a cloud security audit is to identify a cloud service provider&#39;s vulnerabilities and the risks associated with using their cloud services.<\/p>\n<p><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">The benefits of conducting a cloud security audit include e<\/span><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">nsuring compliance with regulatory requirements and i<\/span><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">mproving the overall security posture of the organization using cloud services. This includes:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Analyzing configuration settings.<\/li>\n<li>Monitoring access control lists.<\/li>\n<li>Reviewing activity logs.<\/li>\n<li>Automating compliance with security policies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span id=\"techopedia_explains_cloud_security_audit\">Techopedia Explains Cloud Security Audit<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>A cloud security audit is important because it helps organizations identify and mitigate the risks associated with using a specific cloud service. It is important for business customers to evaluate the security posture of their cloud providers because cloud services are often used to store personally identifiable information (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/4046\/personally-identifiable-information-pii\">PII<\/a>) and other valuable data assets.<\/p>\n<h2><span id=\"cloud_security_audit_tools\">Cloud Security Audit Tools<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Cloud security audit tools can help organizations the assess the risk of using a specific cloud service. Well-known cloud security audit tools include:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.admin-magazine.com\/Archive\/2020\/55\/Prowling-AWS\" target=\"_blank\">Prowler<\/a>: This open source security tool is used to assess AWS security postures. Prowler contains more than 240 controls for creating custom security frameworks.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/kinle.medium.com\/scout-suite-d58d2d520648\" target=\"_blank\">ScoutSuite<\/a>: This open-source, multi-cloud audit tool takes advantage of APIs that cloud providers expose to gather configuration data and mitigate the potential risk of using Azure, AWS, GCP, Oracle or Alibaba cloud services.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cloudsploit.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">CloudSploit<\/a>: This open-source tool helps detect potential security threats for cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) accounts. CloudSploit looks for misconfigurations that can potentially lead to security breaches and monitors account activity in real-time for suspicious behavior. CloudSploit supports Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Oracle Cloud audits.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.getastra.com\/pentesting\/web-app\" target=\"_blank\">Astra&#39;s Pentest<\/a>: This cloud security audit tool is known for having a user-friendly dashboard that allows vulnerabilities to be visualized in real time. Features that help administrators determine the severity of a potential vulnerability are supported with options for remediation assistance and multiple re-scans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Does Cloud Security Audit Mean? A cloud security audit is a process used to assess the security posture of a cloud environment. This assessment can be performed manually or with automated vulnerability and pen testing (VAPT) tools. The goal of a cloud security audit is to identify a cloud service provider&#39;s vulnerabilities and the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7813,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"definitioncat":[215,240,228],"class_list":["post-11671","definition","type-definition","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","definitioncat-cloud-computing","definitioncat-cloud-service-providers","definitioncat-risk-management"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.2 (Yoast SEO v24.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What is Cloud Security Audit? - Definition from Techopedia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This definition explains the meaning of Cloud Security Audit and how this type of pen test tool is used to reduce risk.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cloud Security Audit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This definition explains the meaning of Cloud Security Audit and how this type of pen test tool is used to reduce risk.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/26543\/cloudaudit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Techopedia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/techopedia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-07-22T22:15:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@techopedia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/26543\/cloudaudit#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/26543\/cloudaudit\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Margaret Rouse\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#\/schema\/person\/f5dd538e31ee352d105b8af36c4268a5\"},\"headline\":\"Cloud Security Audit\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-10-05T15:38:06+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-07-22T22:15:22+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/26543\/cloudaudit\"},\"wordCount\":351,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#organization\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/26543\/cloudaudit#respond\"]}],\"articleSection\":\"\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/26543\/cloudaudit\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/26543\/cloudaudit\",\"name\":\"What is Cloud Security Audit? 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