Cloud environments now form the backbone of modern business infrastructure, powering critical apps, data storage, and collaboration. But as adoption has grown, so have threats:
94% of cloud tenants were targeted every month in 2023, and 62% of those targeted tenants were successfully compromised.
A 2024 CrowdStrike report found that cloud intrusions increased by 75% year-over-year in 2024, and "cloud-conscious" attacks, where adversaries specifically abuse cloud-native features, surged by 110%.
A 2025 CrowdStrike report revealed that new and unattributed cloud intrusions increased by 26% compared to the previous year.
This guide explains what a cloud security assessment is, outlines its key components, and offers a practical checklist to help you protect cloud environments.
What Is a Cloud Security Assessment?
A cloud security assessment is a structured evaluation of a cloud environment’s security controls, risks, and vulnerabilities to support data protection and regulatory compliance. Unlike a general IT or network assessment, it focuses on cloud-native technologies, shared responsibility models, and the dynamic nature of multi-cloud operations.
Through these assessments, organizations can identify misconfigurations, weak authentication, and other vulnerabilities that expose data to threats. They strengthen overall security posture by guiding remediation efforts and aligning practices with frameworks such as NIST’s Cloud Computing Reference Architecture.
Cloud security assessments also play a critical role in compliance and incident response, helping organizations validate that their controls meet regulatory requirements and improving how they detect and recover from attacks. By regularly performing assessments, enterprises can anticipate risks and continuously improve their defenses against emerging cloud-specific threats.
Why You Need a Cloud Risk Assessment
Organizations face an expanding threat landscape shaped by multicloud and SaaS adoption. Indeed, each new service integration and the configurations necessary to deploy them introduces potential vulnerabilities. The process is error-prone, and human error is responsible for 82% of cloud misconfigurations.
A structured assessment helps organizations find and fix weaknesses in access controls, data policies, and configuration management and can confirm compliance with frameworks like GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2.
Rubrik simplifies this process with proactive tools like Rubrik DSPM, which continuously evaluates data exposure and access policies, and Rubrik Backup, which provides a last line of defense to restore data quickly and minimize loss when attacks occur.
Key Components of a Cloud Security Assessment
A thorough cloud security assessment examines every layer of your environment to verify protection, resilience, and compliance. Core components that must be evaluated include:
Identity & Access Management (IAM): Evaluate who has access to what, confirming least-privilege permissions and enforcing strong authentication methods such as MFA. Regularly review roles to prevent privilege creep.
Security Controls: Assess firewalls, encryption standards, and network segmentation to verify data protection across and other services.
Data Security & Backup: Confirm that backup frequency, integrity, and recovery align with business continuity goals. Validate that data is encrypted and that backups are tested across Oracle databases or other RDBMSes, as well as cloud storage like AWS and Azure.
Incident Response Plans: Review how your organization detects, responds to, and recovers from cloud-specific threats. Simulated exercises and clear communication protocols can improve readiness.
Compliance Readiness: Map existing controls to frameworks such as GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2. Identify and remediate gaps to maintain audit readiness.
By reviewing these elements, you can build a cloud environment that is resilient in the face of threats, compliant with relevant regulations, and ready to recover quickly from incidents.
2025 Cloud Security Assessment Checklist
As organizations continue to expand their cloud presence, regularly evaluating cloud security is essential to protecting data and meeting compliance goals. The following checklist outlines the key steps for conducting an effective cloud security assessment in 2025—helping teams identify weaknesses, strengthen controls, and sustain ongoing resilience.
Identify all cloud assets and resources: Create a full inventory of virtual machines, containers, storage, applications, and networks to establish visibility across environments.
Review user roles and permissions: Audit access controls and remove unnecessary privileges to enforce least-privilege principles.
Check MFA and authentication methods: Confirm that multi-factor authentication is required for all users and integrated with your identity provider.
Test data encryption in transit and at rest: Verify that encryption protocols like TLS and AES-256 are properly configured and that your key management processes are secure.
Scan for misconfigurations and vulnerabilities: Run automated scans to catch insecure default configurations, open ports, or unpatched systems.
Review third-party integrations and APIs: Confirm that vendors, SaaS apps, and APIs meet your organization’s security standards.
Confirm that logging and monitoring tools are in place: Validate that audit logs, alerts, and dashboards capture activity across all cloud services.
Run a simulated incident response: Conduct tabletop or live drills to test your detection, escalation, and recovery workflows.
Validate backup and disaster recovery protocols: Confirm that backups are recent, tested, and recoverable according to RPO and RTO goals.
Document policies for data lifecycle management: Define how data is stored, archived, and securely deleted.
Implement continuous monitoring and periodic reassessment: Track risks in real time and schedule regular reassessments to adapt to new threats.
Performing these checks routinely helps maintain a resilient, compliant, and attack-ready cloud security posture.
How Rubrik Supports Cloud Security Assessments
Rubrik simplifies and strengthens every stage of a cloud security assessment. The Rubrik Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) platform provides continuous visibility into data access, classification, and exposure risks across multi-cloud environments. Native protection for AWS, Azure, and Oracle automates key elements of the assessment process and offers proactive visibility into sensitive data that could be exposed.
And when incidents do occur, Rubrik's backup and data threat analytics capabilities deliver a fast, reliable recovery path—enabling clean restores and minimizing downtime. Together, these tools support a cloud security strategy that combines prevention, detection, and recovery.
With continuous monitoring, real-time alerts, and automated compliance checks, Rubrik empowers organizations to maintain resilience across every cloud platform. To learn more about protecting your environment, contact Rubrik sales.