The Cloud Compliance Gaps Every CISO Must Close

Read full article here: https://www.unosecur.com/blog/forty-unlocked-doors-hidden-compliance-risks-in-every-cloud/?source=nhimg

Between January and June 2025, Unosecur analysts scanned 50 multi-cloud environments across AWS, Azure, and GCP. What they found wasn’t exotic zero-days or obscure exploits, it was basic identity hygiene failures, repeated across industries.

On average, 40 identity-related compliance gaps were present in every cloud tenant. These included:

• Privileged accounts without MFA

• Duplicate machine/service keys

• Over-provisioned roles

• Stale credentials

For attackers, each gap is an unlocked door. For auditors and insurers, each is a line item with cost attached.

Why “Forty Gaps” Matters

1. Audit Exposure

   • Each open item maps directly to ISO 27001, SOC 2, or PCI-DSS findings.

   • Example: 68% of firms violated ISO 27001 clause 5.17 by not enforcing MFA on privileged accounts.

2. Predictable Breaches

   • Two-thirds of 2025 identity-driven breaches stemmed from these four gap families.

   • Ransomware crews routinely weaponize leaked keys and over-broad roles.

3. Insurance Penalties

   • Cyber-insurers now demand evidence of 30-day key rotation and elimination of standing admin roles.

   • Firms with >25 unresolved gaps saw 18% premium hikes at renewal.

Business Impact

• Audit Fatigue - Every 10 unresolved findings cost teams ~26 hours of extra evidence gathering.

• Premium Hikes - Higher insurance rates for unresolved IAM gaps.

• Real Breaches - Service-account keys exploited within hours once exposed, leading directly to ransomware intrusions.

Three-Step Fix for Cloud Compliance

1. Count Your Own Doors

   • Run automated baseline scans tied directly to ISO 27001, PCI-DSS v4, and SOC 2 IAM controls.

2. Close the Obvious Ones First

   • Enforce IdP-based MFA on all privileged accounts.

   • Eliminate always-on admin roles.

   • Vault or rotate keys older than 30 days.

3. Measure, Don’t Guess

   • Track four IAM hygiene KPIs monthly:

     • % of privileged accounts with MFA

     • Number of standing admin roles

     • Count of stale keys

     • % of service-account keys vaulted

Bottom Line for CISOs

Attackers don’t chase novelty; they chase simplicity. The average cloud tenant has 40 open doors waiting for either an auditor—or an attacker—to walk through. Closing these gaps isn’t about perfection; it’s about removing the most predictable, most preventable causes of breach and compliance failure.

Our H1 2025 Cloud Compliance Pulse will detail sector, provider, and regional breakdowns. The critical question for every CISO is: How many unlocked doors are in your cloud today?