Research catalogue
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187 open-access publications for people responsible for cloud control evidence.
From the desk
187 publicationsCompare just-in-time privileged access in AWS, Azure and Google Cloud
Entra PIM and Google Cloud PAM make roles temporary natively, while AWS relies on TEAM or partner tools. All three end elevation by removing an assignment, and sessions, caches and minted tokens can keep running.
Identity & access · Amazon Web Services / Microsoft Azure / Microsoft Entra / Google Cloud · By Cloud Security DeskPlan Azure disaster recovery for a region without a pair
Thirteen Azure regions have no pair and eight more pair with a restricted-access region. This guide shows which built-in geo-redundancy disappears, what replaces it service by service, and how to choose the recovery region.
Resilience · Microsoft Azure · By Cloud Security DeskSeparate API gateway JWT checks from backend authorization
A gateway that accepts a JWT has checked its signature, issuer, audience and time window. It has not checked token type, revocation, cached decisions or object ownership. This mapping shows which side owns each decision.
Workload security · Amazon Web Services / Microsoft Azure / Google Cloud · By Cloud Security DeskTest PostgreSQL row-level security with the application role
Row-level security only filters queries from roles that do not bypass it. Test with the production login role, through the production pooler, with transaction-local tenant context and a patched minor release.
Workload security · PostgreSQL / PgBouncer / Amazon Web Services / Microsoft Azure / Google Cloud / Supabase · By Cloud Security DeskRestore EBS volumes at the speed your recovery plan assumes
A restored EBS volume is slow until every block arrives from S3. Price the provisioned initialization rate, fast snapshot restore credits and Regional limits as recovery-time arithmetic before an RTO depends on them.
Resilience · Amazon Web Services · By Cloud Security DeskRoll over a SAML signing certificate without an SSO outage
Replacing an identity provider's SAML signing key is a separate contract with every service provider. Classify each one by how it learns keys, overlap where it can hold two and finish by removing the old key everywhere.
Identity & access · Microsoft Entra / Okta / Google Workspace / Amazon Web Services · By Cloud Security DeskPlan the move from ingress-nginx to Gateway API
Ingress-nginx is archived and will not be patched again. Contain the old controller, inventory the behaviors your clients depend on, and cut over to Gateway API with evidence and a rollback path.
Workload security · Kubernetes / Google Cloud / AWS / Azure · By Cloud Security DeskMap the OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications to cloud controls
Each OWASP agentic risk mapped to the controls AWS, Microsoft and Google document for their agent platforms, with a plain account of which risks no infrastructure setting can close.
AI systems · OWASP GenAI Security Project / Amazon Web Services / Microsoft Azure / Google Cloud · By Cloud Security DeskDesign AI agents that contain indirect prompt injection
Filters lower the odds that an agent obeys injected text. Architecture decides what an obeying agent can reach. Compare six published patterns and CaMeL by what each removes, what it costs and what it still misses.
AI systems · Google DeepMind / AgentDojo / NIST / OWASP / Microsoft · By Cloud Security DeskMap cloud incident response to NIST SP 800-61 Revision 3
Revision 3 turned NIST's incident handling guide into a CSF 2.0 profile. Translate its rows into provider contracts, cloud evidence, containment authority and recovery ownership, and fix the log defaults first.
Detection & response · NIST / Amazon Web Services / Microsoft Azure / Google Cloud · By Cloud Security DeskGive Kubernetes pods cloud credentials without static keys
EKS Pod Identity, IRSA, AKS Workload ID and Workload Identity Federation for GKE all swap a projected token for short-lived credentials. What leaks if you stop there is the node's own identity.
Identity & access · Amazon Web Services / Microsoft Azure / Google Cloud / Kubernetes · By Cloud Security DeskContain failures with cell-based architecture and shuffle sharding
Cells limit a failure to the tenants behind one partition only when routing, data and change delivery are partitioned too. Here is how to choose the key, size cells and check the shuffle-sharding arithmetic.
Resilience · AWS / Microsoft Azure / Slack · By Cloud Security DeskPrepare Azure automation for mandatory MFA on resource management
Azure now requires MFA for user accounts that write through Resource Manager. Find the scripts and pipelines that still sign in as people and move each one to a managed identity or federated credential.
Identity & access · Microsoft Azure / Microsoft Entra / GitHub / Azure DevOps / HashiCorp Terraform · By Cloud Security DeskStop S3 ransomware that encrypts objects with customer-provided keys
SSE-C ransomware rewrites S3 objects under a key only the attacker holds. AWS now blocks SSE-C by default on most buckets; this guide covers what that default misses and the controls that close the gap.
Detection & response · Amazon Web Services · By Cloud Security DeskPin third-party GitHub Actions and limit what they can reach
A tag can be moved under your workflow overnight. Pin every action to a commit SHA, enforce it across the organization, and cut the token and secret access a malicious action would inherit.
Workload security · GitHub / OpenSSF / CISA · By Cloud Security DeskInvestigate a CI supply chain compromise from workflow logs to rotated secrets
When an action or package in your pipeline turns out to be malicious, scope the response by exposure window and by what each affected job could reach, then revoke together and hunt for use.
Detection & response · GitHub / AWS / npm · By Cloud Security DeskMove cloud logs to cheaper tiers without losing detection coverage
CloudWatch Infrequent Access, the Sentinel data lake and Cloud Logging exclusions all cut ingestion cost by removing real-time detection hooks. Place each source by the rules that read it, then prove the replacements fire.
Detection & response · AWS / Microsoft Azure / Google Cloud · By Cloud Security DeskPublish npm packages with trusted publishing instead of long-lived tokens
npm revoked classic tokens and capped write tokens at 90 days. Move CI releases to trusted publishing with staged approval, then protect the workflow, tags and environment that now hold publish authority.
Workload security · npm / GitHub / GitLab / CircleCI / Sigstore · By Cloud Security DeskKnow where cloud AI services process your prompts
Bedrock inference profiles, Foundry deployment types and Agent Platform endpoints each decide where a prompt is processed, separately from where data rests. Compare what each provider commits to and how to enforce it.
AI systems · Amazon Web Services / Microsoft Azure / Google Cloud · By Cloud Security DeskDesign health checks that remove broken instances without causing outages
A health check is an automated decision to remove capacity. Keep load balancer checks local, learn what your platform does when every target fails, and set probe timing from documented defaults.
Resilience · Amazon Web Services / Microsoft Azure / Google Cloud / Kubernetes · By Cloud Security DeskBuild an inventory of non-human identities across cloud accounts
Find every service account, service principal, role and key across AWS, Entra and Google Cloud, then record the owner, credential type, privilege and last use that turn a list into decisions.
Identity & access · Amazon Web Services / Microsoft Entra / Microsoft Azure / Google Cloud / OWASP · By Cloud Security DeskEncrypt Kubernetes Secrets at rest with a KMS v2 provider
KMS v2 keeps etcd copies and backups unreadable without an external key, but it does not stop API readers. Configure it, compare what EKS, AKS and GKE already do, and finish key rotations with a rewrite.
Workload security · Kubernetes / Amazon EKS / AWS KMS / Azure Kubernetes Service / Azure Key Vault / Google Kubernetes Engine / Cloud KMS · By Cloud Security DeskCompare managed prompt attack filters in Bedrock, Azure and Vertex AI
Bedrock Guardrails, Azure Prompt Shields and Google Cloud Model Armor all score text for injected instructions. They differ in which content reaches the classifier, how you mark it, and what each one skips.
AI systems · Amazon Web Services / Microsoft Azure / Google Cloud · By Cloud Security DeskPlan for the backlog that follows a regional cloud outage
AWS fixed the DNS fault behind its October 2025 us-east-1 outage within three hours, yet recovery ran into the afternoon. Design retries, queues and capacity automation for that second phase.
Resilience · Amazon Web Services · By Cloud Security Desk