Cloud Security Assessments & Hardening
Smartfind helps you secure AWS, Azure, and GCP with opinionated guardrails that scale as fast as your business. We baseline your current cloud posture, highlight risky defaults and misconfigurations, and then design a hardening plan that aligns identity, network, data, and workload controls to least-privilege, zero trust, and your compliance requirements. The outcome: a cloud environment that is safer by default, easier to monitor, and ready for audits and rapid growth.
What we assess
Smartfind baselines your cloud posture across AWS, Azure, and GCP and then hardens risky defaults that attackers love to abuse. The engagement covers accounts/subscriptions/projects, identities and roles, network perimeters, storage and data protection, secrets and pipelines, build/deploy processes, and logging/monitoring. We focus on how an attacker would move through your environment: from initial access to privilege escalation, data access, and persistence, and then design controls that stop those paths early.
Outcomes
- Least-privilege IAM and safer defaults for users, roles, and service identities
- Guardrails (SCP/Policies/Blueprints) to prevent configuration drift at scale
- Detective controls & high-fidelity alerting for suspicious and high-impact events
- Clear separation of duties between Dev, Ops, and Security teams without blocking velocity
- Documented reference architecture for “what good looks like” in your cloud environment
Platforms
- AWS Organizations & accounts (landing zones, security hub, delegated admin)
- Azure AD/Entra ID & subscriptions (management groups, policies, Defender)
- Google Cloud projects & folders (org policies, SCC, centralized logging)
- Hybrid environments where on-prem identity extends into your cloud tenants
High-value use cases
Landing zone setup
Design and validate a secure landing zone with guardrails across identity, network, logging, and budgets for new accounts/projects. Smartfind helps you move from “random resource sprawl” to a structured hierarchy where every new workload inherits secure-by-default settings.
Least-privilege IAM
Reduce overbroad roles and long-lived keys; enforce MFA, SSO, and break-glass flows. We analyze how identities are actually used, identify privilege creep, and help you move to role-based access with strong guardrails, without locking out engineers or impacting deployments.
Data protection
Harden encryption, key management, public access prevention, and lifecycle policies for critical data stores. We look at S3/Blob/Buckets, databases, backups, and analytics platforms to ensure sensitive data is protected, discoverable, and not accidentally exposed to the internet.
Security pillars
Identity
Principals, roles, policies, SSO/MFA, cross-account trust, and secret hygiene. Smartfind reviews how humans and services authenticate, what they can do, how long their credentials live, and how break-glass access is handled in emergencies.
Network
VPCs/VNETs, segmentation, egress controls, private service endpoints, WAF, and traffic inspection. We aim for “explicitly allowed” over “implicitly open”, reducing attack surface while keeping required connectivity intact.
Data
Encryption at rest/in transit, KMS/KeyVault/Cloud KMS, public access blockers, and data classification controls. Smartfind helps you map which datasets are most sensitive and ensure their keys, access paths, and backups are properly locked down.
Workloads
Kubernetes/containers, serverless, images, supply chain, and CI/CD gating. We review cluster configurations, image sources, deployment pipelines, and runtime security settings so that every new release ships with a strong security baseline.
Controls mapping (examples)
| Domain | Control | Sample checks |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | Least privilege | No wildcard actions; role scoping by environment; short-lived creds; enforced MFA; SSO for console access. |
| Network | Private access | No public DBs; restricted inbound rules; egress restricted via NAT/proxy; WAF on internet fronts; private endpoints for internal services. |
| Data | Encryption & policy | CMKs used for critical data; key rotation; public access blocked; bucket policies reviewed; backups encrypted and access-controlled. |
| Workloads | Supply chain | Image signing; SBOMs; CI secrets scanning; restricted registries; runtime controls for privileged containers and hostPath mounts. |
Methodology
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1) Discovery
Inventory accounts/projects, identities, networks, storage, pipelines, clusters, and logging sources. Smartfind works with your teams to understand how your cloud is organized today and what “critical” means for your business and regulators.
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2) Posture review
Analyze configs vs. benchmarks and threat model likely attack paths. We combine automated checks with manual review to highlight misconfigurations, weak defaults, and places where an attacker could pivot deeper into your environment.
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3) Hardening & detections
Build a remediation plan, guardrails-as-code, and alerting for high-risk events. We show you how to turn policies, SCPs, Azure Policies, and Organization Policies into reusable building blocks, and how to surface meaningful alerts into your SOC or on-call workflows.
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4) Validation
Validate changes, tune rules, and measure reduction in attack paths. Smartfind re-runs key checks and simulates common attacker behaviors to ensure your new controls actually prevent or detect what they were designed to stop.
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5) Reporting & handover
Provide an executive readout, technical report, tracker, and next-steps roadmap. We ensure security, engineering, and leadership each get the level of detail they need, and we leave you with clear owners, timelines, and priorities for ongoing improvement.
Deliverables
- Executive summary for leadership with key risks, themes, and recommended actions
- Technical report with prioritized issues, examples, and platform-specific guidance
- Guardrails-as-code templates (where applicable) for policies, SCPs, and baselines
- Alerting rules and dashboards (sample queries and configuration hints)
- Remediation tracker (CSV/Jira) aligned to owners, severities, and target dates
- Recommended reference architecture for secure cloud landing zones and workloads
Sample finding format
- Title & severity
- Affected resource and cloud platform
- Evidence & reproduction steps (screenshots/queries where relevant)
- Impact & likelihood, including potential attacker paths and data exposure
- Recommended remediation with cloud-native examples and policy snippets
- References to provider docs, CIS benchmarks, and common best practices
Typical Timeline
| Phase | Duration | Activities |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | 1–3 days | Access setup, inventory, data collection, and alignment on scope and priorities. |
| Posture review | 5–10 days | Benchmarking, misconfiguration analysis, and threat modeling of likely attack paths. |
| Hardening | 3–7 days | Design and deployment of guardrails, alerts, and validation checks with your team. |
| Reporting | 2–4 days | Executive readout, technical documentation, and remediation tracker handover. |
Pricing / Engagement Model
Essentials
- 1 cloud account/project in a single provider
- Baseline posture review with focused remediation guidance
- Report + remediation tracker suitable for audits and internal reviews
Growth
- 2–3 accounts/projects across one or more cloud providers
- Hardening plan plus guardrails-as-code templates for key controls
- Alerting rules and tuning recommendations for your existing SOC/SIEM
Continuous
- Quarterly posture reviews and cloud configuration “health checks”
- Change advisory for new services and major architecture decisions
- Executive readouts that track progress and justify security investment
FAQs
Will this affect production workloads?
Smartfind primarily uses read-only posture checks and staged validations. When changes are required, we work through your normal change control process, propose low-risk steps, and coordinate timing with your teams so production workloads remain stable.
Do you implement the fixes?
Yes, if you’d like support beyond advisory. We can pair with your engineers to implement guardrails, policies, and alerting, or provide ready-to-use templates and review your pull requests and infrastructure-as-code changes before they go live.
Which benchmarks do you use?
Smartfind references CIS benchmarks, cloud provider best practices, and your own internal standards. We tailor recommendations to your architecture, risk tolerance, and regulatory landscape instead of blindly applying a checklist.
Can this support ISO 27001 or SOC 2?
Absolutely. Our outputs map to Annex A controls, SOC 2 trust principles, and other frameworks. The reports, guardrails, and trackers we deliver can be used directly as evidence for auditors and customer due diligence requests.
Ready to secure your cloud with Smartfind?
Email info@smartfind.in or call +91-XXXXXXXXXX.
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