Press Release Cloud Security Threat Detection & Defense

Pentera Unveils Groundbreaking Automated Cloud Pen Testing to Minimise Risks from Cloud-Based Threats

CSA Editorial March 13, 2024

2 minutes read

Pentera, today announced the general availability of Pentera Cloud as part of its automated security validation platform to complement its renowned Pentera Core and Surface products.

Pentera Cloud is the first software product enabling on-demand security testing and resilience assessment of corporate cloud accounts against cloud-native attacks. As part of Pentera’s automated security validation platform, Pentera Cloud empowers security teams to reduce exposure to cloud-native attacks stemming from anywhere on the IT attack surface: On-premises, external, and cloud.

“The market for Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) is rapidly accelerating. Organizations are aligning their security efforts to account for business and cyber exposure that is increasingly moving to the cloud,” said Ran Tamir, Chief Product Officer at Pentera. “Pentera is taking security validation to the next level. The introduction of automated cloud pen-testing ensures that organizations can continuously identify and remediate proven cyber exposure to maintain security readiness as they advance their cloud migration journeys.”

As organizations continue to embrace the cloud, they redistribute a greater proportion of their risk to their cloud environments. Threat actors are increasingly targeting cloud assets, and today research shows that 82% of breaches involve data stored in the cloud. Compounding the challenge is that many organizations operate hybrid environments that utilize a mix of multiple cloud providers and on-premises infrastructure. These deployments enhance operational flexibility but they also increase the number of possible attack vectors.

Pentera Cloud introduces automated pen-testing designed for the scale of modern attack surfaces and the speed of dynamic cloud environments. Emulating real threat actor tactics and techniques, Pentera Cloud challenges security controls to identify exploitable gaps across AWS and Azure environments. Examples of exposures that are found by Pentera Cloud include identity compromise, role privilege escalation, lateral movement to PaaS workloads and remote code execution.

“Pentera’s continuous validation has become a real benchmark for the testing we do within our enterprise networks, and with the introduction of Pentera Cloud we are looking to expand those capabilities to our cloud-native environments,” said Joseph Gothelf, VP, Cybersecurity at Wyndham Hotel & Resorts. “Today we aim to ensure that any vulnerabilities or misconfigurations that exist in our network are tended to in a timely fashion. Whenever we’re interested in testing a specific use-case, Pentera’s on-demand testing provides that added value so we don’t need to find pen-testers to ensure continued resilience throughout our Cloud journey.”

With Pentera Cloud organizations benefit from:

Automated cloud attack emulation: Pentera Cloud automatically maps the organization’s AWS and Azure environments, identifying cloud resources, identities, workloads and data. The algorithmic engine emulates cloud-native attacks, including moving laterally across workloads, to test the organization’s resilience against cloud attack techniques mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
Cross Attack Surface Testing – Increasingly complex hybrid environments open new possibilities for malicious hackers to gain a foothold within an organization. Pentera Cloud applies the creativity of experienced threat actors, utilizing data discovered within your cloud ecosystem to move laterally to exploit on-premises environments. And vice versa.
Evidence-based remediation: Pentera Cloud leverages kill-chains analysis and the unique context of the organization’s cloud environment to validate exposure and provide prioritized remediation guidance accordingly.
Augmenting existing cloud security suite – Pentera Cloud complements cloud security solutions such as Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Cloud Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) by validating the exploitability of enumerated risks. Pentera Cloud eliminates false positives to increase remediation efficiency.
Increased productivity – Security teams can now integrate Pentera Cloud test runs in their continuous security validation program, augmenting manual efforts and scaling across cloud regions with ease.