Cloud Risk Inheritance for Propagated User and Service Principal Access
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Solution Overview
Problem
Cloud computing systems face significant security threats due to unauthorized access and data breaches, often facilitated by compromised user accounts and service principals, despite existing security measures, which allows malicious actors to circumvent security measures by creating new accounts or using service principals as proxies.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a risk inheritance system that assigns user risk scores to downstream cloud entities, ensuring that users with high risk scores cannot evade security measures by propagating events, thereby preventing malicious activities and improving security detection capabilities.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional security measures are implemented in cloud computing systems, then unauthorized access is partially prevented, but malicious actors can still circumvent security by creating new accounts or using service principals as proxies
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary risk assessment and assigns risk scores to users before they can create new cloud entities. By evaluating user behavior and assigning risk scores in advance, the system prevents malicious actors from creating clean accounts to bypass security controls
Solution Approach 2:
The system continuously monitors cloud entity activities and feeds this information back to update risk scores. When a user creates entities or performs actions, the system observes these patterns and adjusts risk assessments, creating a dynamic feedback loop that adapts to evolving threats
2Reliability
If risk scores are assigned to individual users only, then user-specific security is improved, but downstream cloud entities can inherit compromised credentials and enable unauthorized access
Solution Approach 1:
The system merges user risk scores with cloud entity risk scores by implementing risk inheritance. When a user creates a cloud entity, the entity inherits the user's risk score, combining individual user security assessment with entity-level security control
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements a nested risk assessment structure where user risk scores are embedded within cloud entity risk scores. This nested approach allows risk propagation from parent users to child entities, ensuring that compromised credentials cannot be used to create secure-looking downstream entities
3Device complexity
If cloud entities are monitored independently without considering parent user risk, then entity-level security is simplified, but security detection accuracy decreases due to lack of contextual risk information
Solution Approach 1:
The risk score serves multiple functions simultaneously: it evaluates user behavior, assesses entity security, and provides contextual information for detection. This universal risk metric eliminates the need for separate monitoring systems while improving detection accuracy through integrated assessment
Data Source
AI summary
The disclosure focuses on using a risk inheritance system to actively prevent unauthorized and compromising activity within a cloud computing system by causing user risk scores to be inherited across downstream cloud entities within the cloud computing system. The risk inheritance system ensures that users with risky user risk scores are unable to circumvent the security measures of the cloud computing system through propagation events. For instance, the risk inheritance system assigns user risk scores to be inherited from a cloud entity of a user to another cloud entity, including other users and service principals, based on detecting the user initiating a propagation event. This way, the risk inheritance system improves the efficiency of the cloud computing system by ensuring that cloud entities are assigned accurate user risk scores.