Cloud Security Policy Hardening via Permission Usage Analysis
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Solution Overview
Problem
Cloud security policies are challenging to harden due to their complexity and dynamic nature, leading to potential cyber-security risks from overly permissive permissions, while making them too restrictive can impose operational risks.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that analyze permission usage maps to identify hardening gaps between granted and used permissions, compute risk scores, and generate recommendations to apply to cloud security policies, thereby hardening the cloud computing platform.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If security policies are made more restrictive to reduce cyber-security risks, then security level is improved, but operational continuity deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary analysis of permission usage patterns before hardening policies. By examining historical usage data and identifying actually-used permissions in advance, the system prepares a mapping of essential permissions that must be preserved, preventing operational disruptions before they occur.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements continuous monitoring and feedback loops to track permission usage after hardening is applied. When operational issues are detected, the system can identify which permission restrictions are causing problems and adjust policies accordingly, ensuring both security and operational continuity are maintained.
2Reliability
If permission auditing is performed to identify unused permissions, then security level is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically performs permission auditing by analyzing usage logs and permission mappings without requiring manual intervention. The automated analysis identifies unused permissions and generates hardening recommendations, reducing the complexity burden on operators while maintaining high security standards.
3Reliability
If permission usage analysis is conducted to identify hardening gaps, then security level is improved, but time consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system continuously collects and analyzes permission usage data in the background before hardening is needed. By maintaining up-to-date permission usage maps and identifying hardening gaps proactively, the system reduces the time required for security assessments when hardening actions are initiated.
Data Source
AI summary
Arrangement for hardening cloud security policies of a cloud computing platform includes analyzing a plurality of permission usage maps, one for each cloud entity of a plurality of cloud entities included in the computing platform to discover at least one hardening gap, wherein each hardening gap is at least a difference between permissions granted and permissions used by one of the cloud entities, wherein each of the permission usage maps represents the permissions granted to a respective one of the cloud entities and the permissions used by that respective at least one of the cloud entities; for each discovered hardening gap, computing a risk score designating a potential risk reduction achieved by addressing the hardening gap; generating at least one hardening recommendation for the at least one hardening gap and its respective computed risk score; and applying the at least one hardening recommendation, thereby hardening the cloud computing platform.