Introduction
The cloud is the backbone of most enterprises today. It provides a range of ground-breaking features and benefits—but also has its fair share of dangerous threats. Prioritizing the mitigation of these cloud-native threats (the most problematic of which can become data breaches, compliance violations, and reputational dents) is non-negotiable.
The best way to start tackling these threats? Understand what comes under the umbrella term “cloud security.” Instead of seeing cloud security as a monolith, it’s important to break down its core components and understand how they connect.
This checklist hits all the key pillars and cornerstones of a strong cloud security program. So if you’re conducting a cloud security assessment to evaluate your current security posture, take a close look at these areas.
Cloud Security Best Practices in 2025 [Cheat Sheet]
Crafted for both novices and seasoned professionals, the cloud security cheat sheet exceeds traditional advice with actionable steps and code snippets.
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The cornerstones of your cloud security posture
Identity and access management (IAM) security
Who has access to what? It seems like a simple question, but its implications in the cloud are massive. In cloud environments, identity becomes the new perimeter—meaning access controls and permissions are key to reducing your attack surface. If you want to reinforce your IAM pillar, then identity governance and zero-trust principles like least-privilege access should be your go-tos.
Because the cloud is so fast-paced, it’s easy to introduce new identities and then lose track of where they are and what access rights they hold. Eventually, issues like identity sprawl, excessive privileges, and compromised credentials can escalate into breaches and other problematic events. By elevating IAM security, you can prevent these incidents and strengthen your overall cloud security posture.
Cloud security best practices for IAM
Introduce multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all privileged accounts.
Enforce strong password policies and prevent credential reuse.
Regularly audit permissions and remove unnecessary privileges.
Monitor for over-permissioned accounts and inactive identities.
Use just-in-time (JIT) access for sensitive operations.
Cloud configuration and misconfiguration management
Your cloud environments are filled to the brim with VMs, containers, databases, data, and other mission-critical resources. If the security configurations on any of these resources are even slightly subpar, it could lead to issues like privilege abuse, data exfiltration, downtime, and compliance fines. That’s precisely why cloud configuration management should be a top priority.
Common cloud misconfigurations include open AWS S3 buckets and excessive network permissions. When cloud misconfigurations fester, it can cause major incidents like the recent ESHYFT PII exposure, which stemmed from a misconfigured S3 bucket.
Cloud security best practices for configuration management
Use infrastructure-as-code (IaC) templates to standardize secure configurations.
Regularly audit cloud configurations against security benchmarks like CIS and NIST.
Enable logging and monitoring for configuration changes.
Introduce automated remediation for non-compliant configurations.
Data security and encryption
At its core, cloud security is about keeping sensitive data safe—not just by encrypting it, but by gaining full visibility into where it lives, who can access it, how it's exposed, and how it moves across your environment.
Data security and encryption in the cloud were already complicated enough, but now there’s a new wrench in the works. If you guessed AI, you guessed right. As AI becomes more embedded in cloud operations and products, securing training data and preventing unauthorized AI tool access is increasingly important—particularly in regulated environments.
Cloud security best practices for data
Encrypt data at rest and in transit using strong cryptographic standards.
Classify your data to enforce access policies on sensitive information.
Restrict public access to data storage resources like S3 and Azure Blob Storage.
Introduce data loss prevention (DLP) policies to prevent accidental data exposure.
Enable logging and monitoring for data access events.
Continuously monitor for unauthorized access or exposure of sensitive data across cloud services.
Network security and microsegmentation
When you’re securing the cloud, you have to move beyond legacy network security approaches. Why? Because those approaches are perimeter-based and largely static, whereas the cloud is more distributed and constantly in flux, making it complex to map and protect. For the cloud, you need perimeterless security models. And remember: Since your cloud likely comprises components from different service providers, you also have to navigate shared responsibility models.
According to the NSA and CISA, some of the most prevalent network misconfigurations that you need to take care of include weak multi-factor authentication, deficient monitoring, and a lack of network segmentation. Granular segmentation of cloud networks can help by improving threat containment, regulatory posture, policy management, and incident response.
Cloud security best practices for network protection
Introduce zero-trust network architecture (ZTNA).
Use microsegmentation to limit the lateral movement of threats.
Regularly audit and restrict security groups and network access control lists (NACLs).
Deploy web application firewalls (WAFs) and API gateways to protect against threats.
Ensure cloud-based firewalls and DDoS protections are in place.
Threat detection and incident response
Things move fast in the cloud, which means that an incident can arrive in the blink of an eye and escalate quickly if your security controls aren’t up to speed. Since the cloud has so many moving parts, continuous threat detection and rapid incident response are crucial. Basically, you need to catch a threat before it becomes anything more than a minor annoyance.
But how do you keep up with the speed of the cloud? Simple: Automate as much as you can. Using AI-driven automation across your cloud security programs, you can identify threats in their nascent stages and then capitalize on automated remediation suggestions and actions. Also, remember that AI-powered threat detection and response is the perfect antidote to AI-powered cyberattacks.
Cloud security best practices for threat detection and response
Enable cloud-native threat detection tools like AWS GuardDuty and Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
Set up security information and event management (SIEM) tools for centralized logging.
Automate response actions using security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) tools.
Introduce anomaly detection to catch unusual activity in cloud environments.
Define and test an incident response plan tailored to cloud-based threats.
Vulnerability management and risk prioritization
Yes, cloud environments have tons of vulnerabilities, but keep in mind that only a handful of these actually deserve your attention. Your cloud security conundrum is figuring out which vulnerabilities are actually dangerous, and the best way to do that is by taking specific workload, business, and cloud contexts into account. In other words, a vulnerability that’s dangerous for someone else may be a very low-risk problem for you.
Not prioritizing or incorrectly prioritizing vulnerabilities can open up the floodgates to many cloud security complications. For starters, you’ll have a lot of blind spots in your environments where more dangerous vulnerabilities may be nested. And your cloud security teams will eventually face alert fatigue due to the high volume of low-risk vulnerability alerts. But if you get a strong risk-based vulnerability management program underway, it can seriously boost cloud security and performance.
Cloud security best practices for vulnerability management
Continuously scan cloud workloads for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
Use risk-based prioritization to focus on exploitable vulnerabilities.
Ensure that patching strategies are automated and synced with DevSecOps workflows.
Monitor for exposed secrets, keys, and credentials in repositories and logs.
Reduce the attack surface by eliminating unused cloud services and instances.
Compliance and governance
Security and compliance always go hand in hand, and that’s especially true in the cloud. You strengthen one, and the other will benefit. But conversely, if there are weaknesses in one pillar, the other will also suffer. With mounting cloud compliance and data sovereignty requirements, you need to make sure that you have a strong cloud compliance and governance strategy.
To maintain a healthy compliance posture and avoid regulatory penalties, consider using a cloud security posture management (CSPM) tool. CSPM tools allow you to enforce various compliance policies and frameworks and automatically detect when your cloud environments fall short of regulatory baselines.
Cloud security best practices for compliance
Design security controls based on frameworks like NIST 800-53, ISO 27001, and SOC 2.
Automate compliance checks to detect and remediate violations.
Maintain an auditable log of security events for forensic investigations.
Introduce policy as code (PaC) to enforce security guardrails at scale. While CSPM tools help detect policy violations across your cloud, policy-as-code ensures those policies are embedded in infrastructure from the start—enabling secure-by-default deployments.
Conduct regular security assessments and penetration tests.
Securing serverless, containers, and Kubernetes
Serverless computing and containerized applications are great ways to make the most of the cloud. But while these applications and resources are immensely useful, they bring many challenges, like monitoring, identification, compliance adherence, and coverage all the way from code to runtime environments.
When it comes to serverless and containers, code-to-cloud coverage is a must. That’s because there could be security issues in early-stage IaC resources, like Dockerfiles, Kubernetes YAMLs, and Helm Charts, as well as in deployed applications. With serverless and containerized platforms like Docker and Kubernetes, legacy approaches will fall short. A purpose-built solution is the way to go.
Cloud security best practices for serverless and containers
Protect Kubernetes clusters against misconfigurations and runtime threats.
Introduce least privilege and network policies for serverless applications.
Scan container images for vulnerabilities before deployment.
Enforce supply chain security best practices for containerized workloads.
Container security requires visibility into both build-time and runtime risks across the container lifecycle.
Supply chain and software dependency security
In highly distributed and complex cloud environments, supply chain security should be one of the most important pillars of your cloud security program. Incidents like the SolarWinds supply chain attack and vulnerabilities like Log4j are reminders of the urgent importance of supply chain and software dependency security.
So, what do you need to worry about with your supply chain and application dependencies? Issues include a mix of misconfigurations, weak APIs, vulnerable IDEs and CI/CD pipelines, and unsecured data, along with a plethora of third-party threats. Beyond sidestepping these issues, securing your supply chain will help you make the most of your cloud vendors’ core capabilities and strong suits.
Cloud security best practices for the supply chain and dependencies
Use an agentless software bill of materials (SBOM) to monitor dependencies.
Validate and secure third-party connections and APIs.
Introduce signing and verification mechanisms for software packages.
Monitor repositories for vulnerable or compromised libraries.
How Wiz can help drive your cloud security program
You’ve likely seen firsthand how the cloud constantly changes. To keep up with the relentless pace of the cloud, you need a proactive, continuous cloud security strategy. It’s the only way to maintain a healthy security posture and stay a few steps ahead of internal and external threats. Your next move: Upgrade from legacy security solutions and embrace security tools that were built for the cloud.
Wiz CNAPP is a unified and scalable platform comprising a diverse suite of cloud security tools. These tools can help secure every single pillar and component of cloud security that we highlighted in this article. Instead of addressing these pillars through disconnected tools, Wiz unifies security across identity, data, workloads, configurations, and supply chain risks—providing full context to prioritize and remediate what matters most.
On top of CIEM, CSPM, AI-SPM, vulnerability management, supply chain security, and many more capabilities, Wiz can help companies gain more clarity on how to approach their cloud security program via the Cloud Security Assessment tool. Wiz’s Cloud Security Assessment Tool helps organizations benchmark their security maturity across key cloud domains like identity, data exposure, configuration risks, and compliance—providing actionable insights to strengthen your posture.
Get a demo now to check out Wiz’s comprehensive and unified cloud security capabilities.