What are the most important cloud security auditing KPIs to report to senior management?

When discussing cloud security auditing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with senior management, focus on the metrics that offer a comprehensive view of the organization's security status in the cloud. These KPIs provide senior management with a way to evaluate the effectiveness of their cloud security strategy and identify areas that need improvement. Here are some of the most important KPIs to report on for cloud security auditing: - Compliance Status - Incident Response Time - Patch Management - Vulnerability Assessment - Unauthorized Access Attempts - Data Encryption - User Access Monitoring - Network Traffic Analysis - Security Group/ Firewall Rule Violations - Resource Configuration Compliance - Identity and Access Management (IAM)

It's important to provide context, trends over time, and details of actionable insights which help the senior management to make well informed decisions and ensure a continuous improvement of the organization's cloud security posture is included during the reporting while a security auditing KPIs is done. Areas to focus: Compliance Status, Data Encryption Incident Response Time, Access Controls, Patch Management status, IAM Usage, Periodic Security Configuration Checks, Network Security controls, DLP effectiveness, Technical skills security Awareness Training, Vendor associated Risk assessment & remediation, Recent and any new security audit trails, Overall dashboard covering security awareness metrics of the platform is very important.

Leading public cloud platforms such as Azure, AWS, and GCP offer native capabilities for implementing regulatory compliance frameworks like ISO, HIPAA/HITRUST, NIST, and others, tailored to various industries and global regions. There's often an overlap between these frameworks, allowing organizations to apply multiple frameworks to fulfill their specific requirements. These can be applied to the entire cloud tenant or to logical units of cloud resources unique to the public cloud platform. These controls provide necessary guard rails preventing the deployment of non-compliant resources and ensuring adherence to regulatory standards.

Some compliance metrics may not be obvious straightaway as some are not required by regulation. Next to built-in Azure & AWS security dashboards, there are important metrics to consider. - Patch Compliance: This is the time it takes to achieve n% patching (e.g. 80% of all patchable vulnerabilities fixed) over the last 7 days. - Staff Training Completeness: It's crucial to pull training data for internal, conference, and external training to technical staff especially security and development. Including certify-able achievements. Think of this as an internal CPE system to ensure your people stay well-informed and aware of the latest threats.

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Another set of not-so-obvious KPI's for the Security Operations Center is: - Ratio of "number of alerts processed by each analyst" to "number of shared queries or notebooks run" 1:1. For a SOC trying to drive automation and consistency in incident analysis, this can be telling to see who is using what analytics & in what situations, vs analysts simply clicking on and closing alerts with no follow up. Think of how useful this can be in a managed SOC model. - Time-to-Detect: Time from when attacker enters the perimeter to when they are detected. Way more useful than MTTR (respond). It won't motivate analysts to play "whack-a-mole" and respond as soon as they see an incident (this could result in losing valuable intel to premature response).

Cloud platforms provide built-in metrics and tools to gauge security posture. When organizations employ multiple public cloud platforms, third-party Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions prove to be valuable. CSPM solutions are capable of assigning risk scores to various cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) resources. Moreover, they offer comprehensive guidance on corrective actions, which some solutions can execute if configured. As part of cloud governance, it is good practice to regularly review the risk scores and rankings. This allows organizations to gain a good understanding of their overall security posture and aids in prioritizing security improvements.

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Capacity Utilisation & orphaned resources. CPU, disk, memory, network utilisation; target of your metrics varies from one system to another. There are many anecdotes of SOCs helping out with cost control by enumerating under-utilised or orphaned resources.

Establishing a strong security culture is a cornerstone of cloud governance. Unlike the distinct physical and logical separation of access common in on-premises infrastructure, cloud security hinges on robust governance that demands continuous and consistent engagement from all stakeholders. This includes IS leadership, architects, administrators, network and security engineers, governance, risk, and compliance teams, security operations center personnel, audit, controls, compliance teams, developers, testers, and end users. It is essential to incorporate cloud training and certification for key stakeholders. Regular security assessments by external experts can provide awareness about how mature the security controls and culture are.

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Make use of the MITRE ATT&CK framework detection & prevention coverage. There are free tools such as DETT&CT that can help you build a dashboard mapping your capabilities to the attacker's TTPs -- and how the team has worked to address those gaps over the past month / quarter / year. Mean time to completion of incident remediation activities; should also help demonstrate the high value of the security team to the organisation.

In addition to internal KPIs, consider benchmarking your performance against industry averages or best practices. Comparing your KPIs with industry norms can offer invaluable context, highlighting areas where your organization excels or needs improvement. This comparative analysis often helps senior management understand the bigger picture and can be a catalyst for strategic adjustments. By closely monitoring these KPIs, senior management can make informed decisions that align with both operational and security objectives.