Identity and Access Management (IAM) misconfigurations are among the most critical issues to address for a hybrid multi-cloud environment. IAM controls who can access what resources and perform what actions within your cloud environment. Misconfigurations in IAM can lead to unauthorized access, data breaches, and other security incidents. Here are some of the most important IAM misconfigurations to be aware of:

• Excessive permissions: Assigning overly permissive IAM roles or policies that grant more privileges than necessary to users, groups, or services. This happens when you rely on default roles/policies as you end up assigning a similar set of permissions or roles to a large group, which may sometimes be overly permissive for some users.

Risk: This can lead to the principle of least privilege being violated, enabling attackers who compromise an account to access and modify resources beyond their intended scope.

• Unused or stale IAM users and roles: Not regularly reviewing and deactivating or deleting unused IAM users, roles, and permissions. It is quite easy to assign an admin role to some users, but keeping track of that access isn’t easy to manage and has always remained a challenge.

Risk: Dormant accounts can become attractive targets for attackers, who might exploit these accounts to gain unauthorized access.

• Missing multi-factor authentication (MFA): Not requiring MFA for sensitive actions, such as accessing administrative consoles or modifying critical resources.

Risk: In cases where passwords are stolen, MFA provides an extra barrier, making it more difficult for attackers to use compromised credentials. Without MFA, the organization has a limited means of preventing unauthorized access, even if they are aware that credentials have been compromised.

• Shared credentials and API keys: Sharing credentials and API keys among users or resources instead of using individualized identities.

Risk: Shared credentials make it difficult to track who is responsible for actions and can lead to unauthorized access if the credentials are compromised.

• Privilege escalation opportunities: Failing to mitigate privilege escalation opportunities, where attackers exploit lower-privileged accounts to gain higher-level access.

Risk: Privilege escalation allows attackers to move laterally through the environment and access more sensitive resources.

• Unmonitored IAM activities: Not setting up proper monitoring and alerting for IAM activities, including changes to roles, permissions, and user accounts.

Risk: Without monitoring, malicious or unauthorized changes to IAM settings can go unnoticed, allowing attackers to maintain persistence.

• Inadequate role segregation: Not enforcing strict separation of duties, allowing a single user to have conflicting roles that could lead to abuse or unauthorized actions.

Risk: Role separation is crucial to prevent abuse of privileges and ensure accountability.

• Default privileges: Not modifying or disabling default IAM roles, permissions, or policies that may come with cloud services.

Risk: Attackers can exploit these default settings to gain access to resources that are not intended to be publicly accessible.

CSPM tools play a vital role in identifying these IAM misconfigurations by continuously monitoring IAM settings, providing visibility into access permissions, and suggesting best practices for maintaining a secure IAM environment.

Now, let’s understand another critical misconfiguration area: network security misconfiguration.