Short summary — do these first
Attack surface grows fast. Start with identity, enforce least privilege, harden the network, and automate recovery. Below are five concrete ways with checklist actions.
1
Enforce Identity & Access Management
Identities are the gatekeepers. Lock down access using role-based controls and MFA.
- Audit roles: Remove unused roles and consolidate permissions.
- Least privilege: Create narrowly-scoped roles per service.
- MFA everywhere: Require MFA for console and API access.
2
Apply Network & Perimeter Controls
Networks in cloud are programmable. Use micro-segmentation and private endpoints.
- Private endpoints: Prefer VPC endpoints over public internet.
- Micro-segmentation: Define small security groups; avoid 0.0.0.0/0.
- Encrypted in transit: Enforce TLS for all traffic.
3
Harden Configurations & Workloads
Default settings are dangerous. Harden images and remove unused services.
- Secure images: Build minimal base images and scan often.
- Runtime policies: Enforce resource limits and read-only filesystems.
- Secrets management: Never store secrets in code repos.
4
Monitor, Detect & Respond
Implement centralized logging, metrics, and alerting with a response playbook.
- Central logs: Forward audit and flow logs to immutable storage.
- Alerting: Define high-fidelity alerts for suspicious IAM activity.
- Runbooks: Run tabletop exercises quarterly.
5
Automate Policies & Compliance
Manual processes fail at scale. Automate policy enforcement and recovery.
- Policy-as-code: Enforce rules via OPA or cloud policies.
- CI/CD gates: Integrate security checks into pipelines.
- Automated backups: Test backups and restores regularly.
Prioritize: what to do first
If you only have one week: (1) audit privileged identities, (2) block public storage access, (3) centralize logs.