Preface

Congratulations, dear reader! Over the past 15 years or so, there has been tremendous growth in the use of cloud platforms. Amazon’s AWS formally launched in 2006, and Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) soon followed in 2008. There are many cloud platforms out there, but AWS, Azure, and GCP are the most popular. AWS, Azure, and GCP empower companies, organizations, and enterprises to deploy networks that are more powerful and scalable than what was possible to do on their own premises. Many organizations even have more than one cloud platform in their networks.

Cloud networks are connected to the public internet, so naturally, they’re susceptible to a wide range of cyberattacks. With the growing popularity of cloud platforms and companies realizing that they need to secure their cloud networks for the sake of business success, people with cloud penetration testing skills are greatly needed in the international job market. By learning how to simulate cyberattacks in cloud platforms for the sake of security testing, your abilities will be desired, no matter where in the world you are.

Pentesting and red teaming in cloud platforms is fundamentally different from doing so in a company’s on-premises networks because Amazon, Microsoft, and Google own the infrastructure. There are rules and policies that you must abide by as a pentester beyond your organization’s own rules and policies. This book will teach you how to perform penetration tests and red team engagements in a cloud-native way.