Are User-friendly Cloud Portals a Must?

After working (nearly) exclusively with #Azure and #GCP #cloudsecurity for more than two-and-a-half years, I spend a few hours this weekend with #AWS. I spent some time with AWS in early 2020 when the pandemic started. Today, I looked at how to secure AWS’s object storage service S3. Which configuration options are there to prevent unwanted access to an S3 bucket? This time, AWS looked to me a little bit like from another world. The features are there, but you must write a couple of code lines. Writing code? A shock if you are used to the Azure Portal, which seems to allow reconfiguring nearly everything on the GUI. But my next thought was: Does it matter?

I came to three conclusions:

1.?????In an “infrastructure-as-code” era, configuration files are a must. They help rebuild a solution or a complete data center if things crash entirely. An excellent portal does not help with that. It might even lure engineers into making little adjustments on the GUI that are not reflected in configuration files.

2.?????If a cloud provider wants to make potential customers paying customers, quick success and easy-to-understand features are a big plus in an evaluation or proof-of-concept phase. With that in mind, an easy-to-use portal is a big bonus.

3.?????Suppose assessors or security specialists (or the engineers performing the configuration) want to understand how secure a cloud setup is quickly. In that case, a great portal eases the work, especially if they do not work with policies and configuration files daily. Just click on a resource you are interested in, and you immediately see important security configurations. Cool.

So, my take-home message is: a good portal does not ease the engineering but the maintenance for years to come. Now, I am curious about your experience and opinion. I have two questions for you. First, would you agree with my impression regarding AWS and Azure? Second, based on your experience, how important is a user-friendly portal? Why?