Background: A rapidly growing software company relied on AWS for hosting applications and services. While most cloud accounts were centrally managed by IT, individual team members occasionally set up their own accounts to meet project deadlines. These unapproved, "shadow" AWS accounts bypassed central oversight, leaving security and compliance teams unaware of their existence.
The Incident
A senior developer on a product team created an independent AWS account to test new features and work on confidential code. Using personal credentials and bypassing IT approval, they hosted internal services and integrated company data to simulate real-world scenarios.
When the developer left the company, their official accounts were deactivated through the offboarding process, but the shadow AWS account remained active. Since IT was unaware of this account, it continued to operate, hosting confidential code and accessing company data.
Pain Points and Discovery
Several months later, IT detected unusual traffic within the primary AWS environment, tracing it back to API calls from an external source. This led them to uncover the unknown AWS account, revealing critical issues:
Ongoing Data Access: The AWS account still retained access to proprietary code repositories and databases, allowing it to access company data long after the developer's departure. This created a major security risk, as data in the account could be downloaded or modified without oversight.
Security Vulnerabilities: The unmonitored account contained services and code that had not been updated or patched, exposing them to potential exploits. Any unauthorized access to this environment could have jeopardized sensitive company data.
Compliance Violation: The company operated under SOC 2 and GDPR standards, which required stringent data access controls. The presence of sensitive data in an untracked AWS environment was a compliance violation, risking fines and reputational damage.
Financial Waste: With the account still running services, unexpected AWS charges accumulated for months, adding unnecessary costs to the project.
Remediation and Preventive Measures
Following this incident, the company implemented several measures to prevent future risks from shadow accounts:
Automated Cloud Discovery: IT adopted cloud discovery tools to detect and flag any unauthorized AWS accounts linked to company data, improving visibility over unapproved accounts.
Enhanced Offboarding Protocols: A comprehensive offboarding process was established to include checks for cloud resources tied to departing employees, ensuring unknown environments were decommissioned.
Quarterly Cloud Audits: Regular audits were introduced to track active accounts and monitor data flows, reducing the likelihood of unknown accounts remaining active.
This case highlights the importance of centralized cloud management and robust offboarding protocols. The unknown AWS account not only posed compliance and security risks but also led to financial waste, underscoring the need for stringent oversight of all cloud resources.
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