#iam

Cloud Security Alliance ranks inadequate IAM — driven by non-human identity sprawl — as the #1 cloud threat for 2026, with two AI-related risks debuting on the list. What actually changed, and what it means for cloud teams.

In 2024, UNC5537 stole data from 165 Snowflake customers without exploiting a single vulnerability. In 2023, Scattered Spider paralysed MGM in a 10-minute phone call. This is not a technical attack story — it is the new era where identity is the only perimeter left.

Field note series on Cloud Security Engineering — shifting skills, modern tooling, and how engineers navigate a landscape that has converged with AI and agentic systems.

Cloud Security Baseline (CSB) is the minimum set of controls that must exist before the first workload deploys. Here's the practical breakdown — from CIS Benchmarks, drift detection, to automatically enforcing baseline.

The role of cloud security engineer has changed more in 2 years than in the 5 years before. Here's an honest breakdown: what's stayed the same, what's changed, and what new skills you need now.