Managing cloud security can be a complex task, especially when trying to maintain visibility, detect misconfigurations, and ensure compliance across sprawling cloud environments. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools are designed to automate these tasks, offering a way to monitor and enforce best practices, identify vulnerabilities, and prevent unauthorized access and data breaches.
However, traditional CSPM tools often focus too narrowly on isolated misconfigurations, leading to alert fatigue and a fragmented understanding of your overall security posture. This approach often misses the bigger picture, how seemingly minor issues can combine to create “toxic combinations” that pose significant risks.
In this blog post, we will explore the concept of toxic combinations in cloud security and highlight how certain misconfigurations and vulnerabilities can create severe risks, and provide strategies for detecting and remediating these issues.
What Are Toxic Combinations?
Toxic combinations occur when multiple core risks, such as misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and network exposures, converge to create a significantly heightened security threat. These combined core risks form pathways that attackers can exploit to access and compromise high-value resources. While each risk may be manageable on its own, their interaction can escalate into severe security breaches, making them particularly dangerous.
From Isolated Risks to Comprehensive Insights
Understanding toxic combinations is crucial for effectively managing cloud security. While identifying individual risks like misconfigurations or vulnerabilities is important, it is equally vital to recognize how these risks can interact and escalate into more significant threats. This deeper analysis is where true security lies.
That is why the Solvo platform goes beyond merely identifying isolated issues. Our approach is designed to uncover how these security issues connect and potentially evolve into toxic combinations. The Solvo unified risk engine correlates vulnerabilities, identities, data exposures, and other core risks, providing a comprehensive view of their collective impact on your security posture.
Reduce Noise and Focus on What Matters
Imagine an EC2 instance in your cloud environment with permissions to assume all roles.
Now, imagine this instance also has a high severity vulnerability with a known exploit and is exposed to the internet via port 22. The combination of these risks creates a perfect storm, the open port offers a clear entry point for attackers, the vulnerability allows unauthorized access, and the excessive role permissions could enable an attacker to escalate privileges across your environment.
Solvo addresses these issues comprehensively. We not only identify and prioritize these risks but also offer targeted remediation strategies, creating structured and automated solutions.
For this toxic combination, Solvo recommends adjusting role permissions and provides a pre-configured policy suggestion. Solvo Policy Manager engine continuously performs runtime analysis, understanding the behavior and context of the instance in real-time.
For high severity vulnerabilities, we offer CLI commands to resolve them effectively.
By addressing these vulnerabilities and permissions, you can mitigate the risks associated with this toxic combination, enhancing the overall security posture of your cloud environment efficiently and effectively.
If you’re ready to see how toxic combinations could be affecting your cloud environment and discover how Solvo can help you prioritize and automate the remediation of critical risks, start your 14-day free trial today. Click here to get started.