Data Exfiltration via Machine Roles
Risk: Lambda functions, EC2 roles, or pipelines with excessive access to S3 or KMS can be exploited to exfiltrate sensitive data.
InstaAccess Solution:
Identify non-human identities with read/write access to data stores.
Detect lack of encryption enforcement or wide-open KMS permissions.
Recommend policy conditions (e.g., source VPC, tag-based access).
Integrate with CloudTrail to correlate actions to service roles.
Lateral Movement Across Environments
Risk: Workloads with cross-account trust can be used to move laterally from dev to prod or from compromised environments.
InstaAccess Solution:
Map and visualize trust policies and cross-account role assumptions.
Flag roles that can assume into higher-privilege or unrelated accounts.
Enforce tighter trust policies using SCPs and conditional logic.
Unauthorized API Activity via Service Roles
Risk: Machine roles with broad access to AWS services may be abused to manipulate infrastructure.
InstaAccess Solution:
Continuously analyze API call patterns against role permissions.
Flag over-provisioned roles based on usage deltas.
Right-size access based on actual workload behavior.
Segregation of Duties in Automation Pipelines
Risk: A single machine identity with build, deploy, and modify permissions violates separation of duties.
InstaAccess Solution:
Detect roles with conflicting permissions.
Recommend decomposing roles based on CI/CD stage.
Enforce pipeline-stage isolation via scoped IAM roles.
Compliance-Ready Controls for Non-Human Access
Risk: Regulatory frameworks (e.g., SOC 2, PCI-DSS) require machine identity governance.
InstaAccess Solution:
Enable audit trails for machine identity activity.
Support evidence generation for access scope and change history.
Map to compliance controls like least privilege and access review.
Privilege Escalation in Workloads
Risk: A compromised or misconfigured machine identity may assume admin roles or grant itself more permissions.
InstaAccess Solution:
Detect toxic combinations like iam:PassRole + ec2:RunInstances.
Alert on roles with assume-role permissions across trust boundaries.
Apply permissions boundaries to limit escalation vectors.
Credential Exposure in CI/CD and Runtime
Risk: Hardcoded or long-lived credentials in pipelines or containers can be exploited by attackers.
InstaAccess Solution:
Detect IAM users and access keys associated with automation.
Recommend migration to IAM roles and instance profiles.
Monitor CloudTrail for suspicious key usage patterns.
Governance and Policy Hygiene for Machine Access
Risk: Stale, duplicate, or orphaned roles introduce unnecessary risk and complexity.
InstaAccess Solution:
Identify unused roles or inactive policies.
Track role proliferation across accounts.
Suggest cleanup actions and standardization.
Blast Radius Reduction for Workload Compromise
Risk: A compromised function or container role can access multiple services or regions.
InstaAccess Solution:
Enforce regional and service-specific policy conditions.
Detect high-privilege roles used across environments.
Apply SCPs to restrict excessive service usage.
Reducing Attack Surface of Non-Human Identities
Risk: Default or legacy roles often carry permissions no longer needed.
InstaAccess Solution:
Continuously scan for unused permissions and excessive policies.
Highlight risky wildcard permissions.
Provide right-sizing recommendations and automated enforcement.
Non-human identities are the backbone of modern cloud operations—but they also present a silent and scalable risk. InstaAccess gives you the tools to see, control, and reduce that risk.