Why? Simply because you can never predict what might happen to your data: you could lose your laptop with thousands of stored projects or accidentally delete entire folders containing your child’s photos. 

The good news is that backups can easily protect you from these problems. And even better, you don’t have to pay to get an efficient data protection solution. 

There’s a wide range of backup software available that offers a solid set of features for effective data protection completely free of charge for individual use. 

The only thing that matters is understanding your requirements for these solutions: what to back up, how to do it, what limitations might prevent you from choosing a particular tool, and, finally, what the essentials of a perfect backup solution for home use are. 

Free Backup Solutions Explained 

Sometimes, unfortunately, “free” can mean “incomplete.”

Many solutions on the market are limited in functionality, and what might appear to be the same version as the paid product is often just a trimmed-down edition with blocked or removed features, designed to entice you into purchasing a more advanced version. 

However, not all limitations are problematic for a home user. Free solutions may simply not offer advanced features that businesses or power users require, ensuring the software remains simple and manageable for individual users who don’t need them.

So, yes, these tools do work, but it’s important to understand their limitations and choose a solution that fits your needs as closely as possible.

Typical limitations can include lack of support, fewer or no advanced features (like image-based backup, for instance), and storage restrictions in terms of supported storage providers and the volume of data that can be backed up. 

Still, for the most part, free backup solutions are more than enough for home users.

With the available features, you can successfully back up your data and protect your most valuable assets, but it’s still important to do your research to choose the solution that best fits your needs. 

Key Features to Consider 

Now, you need to understand the essential features of a free backup solution that you might want to check: 

• Backup options supported: the most important types are file-level backup (for files and folders only) and image-based backup (a full snapshot of your entire system). 

• Storage options supported: to follow the industry standard called 3-2-1-1-0 backup rule, you should be able to back up your data both locally and to the cloud. Some free editions may only support local storage or a very limited number of offsite storage destinations. The best choice is usually a solution that supports a BYOS (bring-your-own-storage) approach, allowing you to connect to the storage account of your choice. 

• Customizable scheduling: the solution should allow you to schedule backups to run on specific days or at specific times. 

• Customizable retention and versioning settings: the ability to retain multiple versions of files lets you restore the latest version if data is lost or corrupted. 

• Security: some backup tools don’t encrypt your data while it’s being uploaded or stored, and they may not have features like object lock. Object lock is a feature that prevents your files from being deleted or changed for a certain period of time, adding an extra layer of protection against ransomware. 

• Simplicity: for personal use, ease of deployment, installation, and use is critical. If the interface is overwhelming or you can’t find or understand the features you need, that’s a red flag and a reason to look for another solution. 

• Upgrade options: if the free edition is limited to personal use, you should be able to scale up or access more advanced features easily. Usually, this means a smooth switch to the paid version or an option to enable paid features within your current solution. 

Best Free Backup Solutions 

According to recent reviews and round-ups, some of the top free tools include: 

MSP360 Backup Free 

MSP360 Free Backup software is a free backup solution for personal data backup.

For a free backup tool, MSP360 Backup Free provides a remarkably rich set of features: it runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS, and offers support for a wide range of cloud storage options like AWS, Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage, Backblaze B2, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IDrive e2, and other S3-compatible storage providers.

With the recent update, the freeware also supports image-based backups and raises the storage limit to 5 TB – which is incredible for home users. This software also supports object lock making it an excellent choice for ransomware protection. 

EaseUS ToDo Backup Free 

EaseUS ToDo Backup Free is a solution for home use that features drive and partition imaging and file and folder backup for Windows.

As they state on their website, “advanced backup options are open to free users, such as incremental and differential backup, scheduled backup, encrypted backup, <…> and more”. 

They also offer 250 GB of free storage for users (which is great, but might not be enough for the majority of home users), and if you run out of the storage space, you can purchase 1 TB of storage space for $20.  

Paragon Backup & Recovery Community Edition 

This free backup solution provides full support for Windows-based desktops, and supports both file-level and disk image backups.

Other features included in the free edition include password protection, compression, automatic scheduling, versioning, and more making this freeware a very strong and advanced choice for home users.

With Paragon freeware, you can back up your data to different types of drives and devices, including SSDs, HDDs, Windows Storage Spaces, advanced-format drives, and more.  

Cobian Backup 

Cobian Backup is one of the most advanced solutions on this list (which might be a little bit too much for home users, however, if you know exactly how your backups should be configured, you should opt for this solution) with support for multiple backup jobs creation, archiving to external hard drive or network location, and simultaneous backups to several locations.

You can also enable encryption to add an extra layer of protection for your files and enable encryption to save on storage space.  

AOMEI Backupper Standard 

Another great solution on our list is a free backup from AOMEI: it offers support for file, image, and system backup, and one-way sync and disaster recovery. 

It’s a full-featured free backup solution for Windows: back up Windows OS, entire hard disk, partitions and individual files. With this solution, you can customize backup schedules, enable compression, configure email notification, and more.  

Final Thoughts 

Free backup software has matured to the point where it can offer surprisingly robust protection.

With careful selection, you can deploy a perfect solution that covers your data, provides off-site protection, and gives you peace of mind with no dime spent.  

The post Guide to Choosing the Best Free Backup Software for Secure, Reliable Cloud Backup appeared first on Cyber Security News.

Unlike traditional network tests, cloud pentesting focuses on unique attack vectors such as misconfigured services, insecure APIs, and overly permissive IAM (Identity and Access Management) policies.

In 2025, the best companies in this field combine deep knowledge of cloud-native vulnerabilities with a flexible, platform-driven approach to provide continuous, actionable security insights.

Why We Choose It

Cloud environments, particularly multi-cloud setups, present a complex security challenge.

Misconfigurations are the leading cause of cloud security breaches, and automated scanners often miss the subtle, exploitable flaws in how services are connected or configured.

Cloud penetration testing goes beyond automated scans by simulating a real-world attacker’s mindset.

Expert pentesters exploit weaknesses in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure, uncovering critical vulnerabilities that could lead to data theft, service disruption, or unauthorized access.

How We Choose The Best Cloud Penetration Testing Companies in 2025

We selected the top cloud penetration testing companies for 2025 based on three key criteria:

• Experience & Expertise (E-E): We looked for companies with a proven track record, a deep understanding of cloud service provider (CSP) nuances, and a history of discovering and responsibly disclosing cloud vulnerabilities.
• Authoritativeness & Trustworthiness (A-T): We considered market leadership, industry recognition, and the reputation of their offensive security teams.
• Feature-Richness: We assessed the comprehensiveness of their platforms and services, looking for capabilities in:
• CSP-Specific Expertise: The ability to test for vulnerabilities unique to AWS, Azure, and GCP.
• Continuous Testing: A platform or service model that allows for ongoing security validation as the cloud environment changes.
• Advanced Reconnaissance: The capability to discover all publicly exposed cloud assets.
• Actionable Reporting: Clear, prioritized reports with detailed remediation guidance and re-testing options.

Comparison Of Key Features in 2025

Company	CSP-Specific Expertise	Continuous Testing	Advanced Reconnaissance	Actionable Reporting
NetSPI	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Bishop Fox	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Synack	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Rhino Security Labs	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Praetorian	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Coalfire	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pentera Cloud	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
TrustedSec	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Cobalt.io	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Bluefire Redteam	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Top 10 Best Cloud Penetration Testing Companies in 2025

• NetSPI
• Bishop Fox
• Synack
• Rhino Security Labs
• Praetorian
• Coalfire
• Pentera Cloud
• TrustedSec
• Cobalt.io
• Bluefire Redteam

1. NetSPI

NetSPI is a leader in cloud penetration testing, distinguished by its PTaaS (Penetration Testing as a Service) platform, Resolve.

Its team of experts specializes in finding vulnerabilities in multi-cloud environments, including misconfigurations, overly permissive access, and flaws in container security.

NetSPI’s platform provides real-time visibility into findings, making the entire testing process more efficient and collaborative.

The company’s work with 9 out of 10 of the top banks in the US and the largest cloud providers highlights their trusted expertise.

Why You Want to Buy It:

NetSPI’s Resolve platform streamlines the entire pentest workflow, from scoping to remediation. This makes it an ideal choice for organizations that need to centralize their security findings and measure progress over time.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
CSP-Specific Expertise	Yes	Specialists in AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Continuous Testing	Yes	PTaaS model with continuous testing and real-time findings.
Advanced Reconnaissance	Yes	Comprehensive external asset discovery.
Actionable Reporting	Yes	In-platform collaboration and detailed reports.

Best For: Large enterprises that need a scalable, continuous, and platform-driven approach to cloud security.

Try NetSPI here → NetSPI Official Website

2. Bishop Fox

Bishop Fox is a top-tier offensive security firm with a strong reputation for its Cloud Penetration Testing services.

The company’s team of highly creative and technical experts, known as “The Fox,” uses cutting-edge, proprietary and open-source tools to simulate real-world attacks.

They excel at identifying complex misconfigurations and attack pathways, providing a truly realistic assessment of an organization’s cloud defenses.

Why You Want to Buy It:

Bishop Fox’s expertise is unmatched. Their testers go beyond standard checks to find sophisticated vulnerabilities that automated tools and less-experienced firms would miss.

They provide insights into the most critical and exploitable attack paths.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
CSP-Specific Expertise	Yes	Deep expertise across all major CSPs.
Continuous Testing	Yes	Offers a continuous attack surface testing (CAST) model.
Advanced Reconnaissance	Yes	In-depth discovery of cloud-related attack paths.
Actionable Reporting	Yes	Tailored executive and technical reports with prioritized findings.

Best For: Organizations that need a highly customized and technically deep-dive cloud security assessment from one of the most respected offensive security firms.

Try Bishop Fox here → Bishop Fox Official Website

3. Synack

Synack pioneered the PTaaS model and applies its crowdsourced approach to cloud security.

The company can deploy a diverse community of vetted ethical hackers to test cloud environments, providing broader coverage and finding more vulnerabilities in less time than a small, static team.

Synack’s platform can integrate with AWS, Azure, and GCP to automatically detect changes and launch on-demand tests, making it a highly agile solution.

Why You Want to Buy It:

Synack’s model offers unparalleled scalability and speed. The ability to have multiple researchers from around the world testing your cloud environment simultaneously provides a comprehensive, 24/7 security posture.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
CSP-Specific Expertise	Yes	Integrations with AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Continuous Testing	Yes	On-demand and continuous testing via the Synack Platform.
Advanced Reconnaissance	Yes	Continuous asset discovery with AI-powered validation.
Actionable Reporting	Yes	Real-time reporting and patch verification on the platform.

Best For: Companies that need continuous, on-demand cloud testing and want to leverage the power of a vast, crowdsourced community of elite hackers.

Try Synack here → Synack Official Website

4. Rhino Security Labs

Rhino Security Labs is a highly specialized cloud penetration testing company, widely recognized for its deep expertise in AWS, Azure, and GCP.

The company’s research team has a history of discovering and publishing high-profile cloud vulnerabilities and tools, such as the Pacu cloud exploitation framework.

This research-driven approach ensures that their tests are always up-to-date with the latest attack techniques.

Why You Want to Buy It:

Rhino Security Labs’ services are based on a foundation of cutting-edge research, meaning they’ll uncover vulnerabilities that are not yet widely known.

They are experts in attacking the cloud from the perspective of a sophisticated threat actor.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
CSP-Specific Expertise	Yes	Core specialization in AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Continuous Testing	No	Focuses on traditional, time-boxed engagements.
Advanced Reconnaissance	Yes	In-depth cloud asset enumeration.
Actionable Reporting	Yes	Detailed reports with clear remediation guidance.

Best For: Organizations with complex cloud environments that want to work with a firm known for its deep technical expertise and contributions to cloud security research.

Try Rhino Security Labs here → Rhino Security Labs Official Website

5. Praetorian

Praetorian is an offensive cybersecurity company that provides expert-led cloud penetration testing services. They use an adversarial mindset to help organizations prioritize and reduce material risks in their cloud environments.

Praetorian’s services are designed to go beyond simple compliance, focusing on uncovering exploitable vulnerabilities that are most likely to be leveraged by real-world attackers.

The company also offers Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) to maintain security over time.

Why You Want to Buy It:

Praetorian’s unique approach helps you optimize your security budget by focusing on the vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk.

Their expertise ensures that you’re not just finding flaws but understanding their potential impact on your business.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
CSP-Specific Expertise	Yes	Strong expertise across all major CSPs.
Continuous Testing	Yes	CTEM services for continuous security validation.
Advanced Reconnaissance	Yes	Identifies external attack surface and exploitable entry points.
Actionable Reporting	Yes	Provides insights on material risk and strategic recommendations.

Best For: Enterprises that want a strategic partner for offensive security, focusing on real-world risk reduction rather than just compliance.

Try Praetorian here → Praetorian Official Website

6. Coalfire

Coalfire is a cybersecurity services firm with a strong focus on compliance, particularly for FedRAMP, PCI, and SOC 2.

Its cloud penetration testing services are tailored to help organizations meet these stringent regulatory requirements while also strengthening their security posture.

Coalfire’s experts assess cloud configurations, network segmentation, and application security to ensure that both technical and compliance standards are met.

Why You Want to Buy It:

Coalfire’s deep expertise in compliance and its history of working with federal and highly-regulated clients makes it an ideal partner for businesses that need to demonstrate their cloud security posture to auditors and regulators.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
CSP-Specific Expertise	Yes	Expertise in cloud security for various compliance frameworks.
Continuous Testing	Yes	Offers continuous testing as part of its managed services.
Advanced Reconnaissance	Yes	In-depth cloud asset discovery.
Actionable Reporting	Yes	Detailed reports with a strong focus on compliance requirements.

Best For: Organizations in highly regulated industries that need a cloud penetration test that meets strict compliance standards.

Try Coalfire here → Coalfire Official Website

7. Pentera Cloud

Pentera Cloud offers a unique, automated security validation and one of the core cloud penetration testing companies platform that simulates cloud-native attacks.

Unlike manual penetration testing, Pentera’s solution continuously challenges an organization’s cloud environment, finding exploitable misconfigurations and attack paths without the need for human intervention.

The platform provides a hybrid test, identifying attack vectors that extend across both cloud and on-premises environments.

Why You Want to Buy It:

Pentera Cloud provides a continuous, always-on security assessment, making it an excellent tool for organizations with rapidly changing cloud environments.

Its ability to find exploitable kill-chains between on-premises and cloud systems is a key advantage.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
CSP-Specific Expertise	Yes	Automated testing for cloud-native vulnerabilities.
Continuous Testing	Yes	Continuous security validation and attack emulation.
Advanced Reconnaissance	Yes	Maps cloud workloads, databases, and identities.
Actionable Reporting	Yes	Evidence-based remediation reports.

Best For: Organizations that need to continuously validate their cloud security controls with an automated, hybrid approach.

Try Pentera Cloud here → Pentera Cloud Official Website

8. TrustedSec

TrustedSec is a well-regarded cybersecurity consulting firm known for its expert-led, hands-on penetration testing services.

Their approach to cloud security is highly customized, with consultants simulating real-world cyberattacks on AWS, Azure, and GCP environments.

TrustedSec is renowned for its detailed reporting and a strong focus on providing clear, prioritized remediation guidance.

Why You Want to Buy It:

TrustedSec’s reputation is built on the expertise of its consultants. If you want a thorough, hands-on assessment from a firm that prioritizes a deep understanding of your unique environment, TrustedSec is an excellent choice.

Feature	Yes/No	Specifications
CSP-Specific Expertise	Yes	Specialists in AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Continuous Testing	No	Focuses on traditional, project-based engagements.
Advanced Reconnaissance	Yes	Conducts extensive cloud asset enumeration.
Actionable Reporting	Yes	Detailed, technical reports with remediation advice.

Best For: Companies that value a personalized, white-glove service from a team of highly-skilled and ethical hackers.

Try TrustedSec here → TrustedSec Official Website

9. Cobalt.io

Cobalt.io is a pioneer of the PTaaS model, offering a platform that connects businesses with a global community of vetted security researchers.

For cloud penetration testing, Cobalt’s platform enables organizations to quickly scope and launch engagements, providing access to specialized talent and accelerating the testing process.

The platform centralizes all findings, making it easy to manage and track vulnerabilities.

Why You Want to Buy It:

Cobalt’s platform and crowdsourced model allow you to launch a cloud pentest in days, not months.

The platform’s streamlined workflow and on-demand access to talent make it an efficient way to integrate security into your development lifecycle.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
CSP-Specific Expertise	Yes	Offers network & cloud security testing.
Continuous Testing	Yes	PTaaS model for on-demand and continuous engagements.
Advanced Reconnaissance	Yes	Identifies and tests the cloud attack surface.
Actionable Reporting	Yes	In-platform dashboards and bug reports.

Best For: Fast-moving tech companies and agile teams that need a flexible, on-demand, and scalable solution for cloud penetration testing.

Try Cobalt.io here → Cobalt.io Official Website

10. Bluefire Redteam

Bluefire Redteam is a highly specialized offensive security firm that focuses on red team operations and adversary emulation.

While they offer standard penetration testing, their core strength lies in simulating complex, multi-layered attacks across an organization’s entire infrastructure, including their cloud environments. Their work is often intelligence-led, based on the tactics of real-world threat actors.

Why You Want to Buy It:

If your goal is not just to find vulnerabilities but to test your security team’s ability to detect and respond to a full-scale, realistic attack, Bluefire Redteam is the right partner.

They provide a comprehensive assessment of your people, processes, and technology against a determined adversary.

Features	Yes/No	Specifications
CSP-Specific Expertise	Yes	Deep expertise in simulating attacks on complex, multi-cloud architectures.
Continuous Testing	Yes	Offers continuous red teaming and security validation services.
Advanced Reconnaissance	Yes	Adversary emulation is their core service, using advanced TTPs.
Actionable Reporting	Yes	Reports are focused on strategic insights and defensive gaps, not just a list of bugs.

Best For: Mature security organizations that need to test their defensive capabilities and identify gaps in their detection and response strategy with a realistic cloud red team engagement.

Try Bluefire Redteam here → Bluefire Redteam Official Website

Conclusion

The cloud has fundamentally changed the landscape of cybersecurity, and cloud penetration testing is no longer a niche service it’s a necessity.

The top firms in 2025 are those that have moved beyond traditional testing to embrace the complexities of multi-cloud environments, continuously evolving attack vectors, and the need for speed.

While platforms like NetSPI, Synack, and Cobalt.io offer a modern, efficient PTaaS model, firms like Bishop Fox and Rhino Security Labs provide deep, research-backed expertise for the most critical of cloud environments.

Your choice should align with your organization’s specific needs, whether that is continuous, automated validation, a deep-dive expert assessment, or compliance-focused testing.

The post Top 10 Best Cloud Penetration Testing Companies in 2025 appeared first on Cyber Security News.

An internal network pentest simulates a hacker who has already gained access, testing the effectiveness of your internal segmentation, access controls, and detection and response capabilities.

The internal network is often where an attacker moves to escalate privileges, discover sensitive data, and exfiltrate information.

Without an internal penetration test, organizations are left blind to a critical phase of the attack kill chain. These assessments are essential for:

• Validating a Zero Trust Model: Verifying that your internal network is segmented and that access is strictly controlled, even from within.
• Identifying Lateral Movement Paths: Discovering how an attacker could move from a single compromised host to critical assets.
• Testing Incident Response (IR) Capabilities: Measuring how quickly your internal security team can detect and respond to an in-progress breach.

How We Choose Best Internal Network Penetration Testing companies

We selected the top internal network penetration testing companies for 2025 based on three key criteria:

• Experience & Expertise (E-E): Firms with a proven track record, deep knowledge of the latest internal attack vectors (e.g., AD abuse, privilege escalation), and a history of contributing to offensive security research.
• Authoritativeness & Trustworthiness (A-T): Companies with a strong market reputation, high ratings from industry analysts, and a team of highly certified and respected professionals.
• Feature-Richness: Providers that offer comprehensive services, including objective-based testing, actionable reporting, and flexible engagement models.

Comparison Of Key Features in 2025

Company	Objective-Based Testing	Red Team Expertise	Compliance Focus	Flexible Reporting
Bishop Fox	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
NCC Group	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
NetSPI	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Coalfire	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
IOActive	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
MDSec	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Praetorian	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
TrustedSec	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Offensive Security	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Kroll	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

1. Bishop Fox

Bishop Fox is a premier offensive security firm, renowned for its technical expertise and creative approach to internal network penetration testing.

Their team of “ethical hackers” goes beyond automated scans to find complex vulnerabilities, especially in Active Directory and on-premises infrastructure.

They are trusted by Fortune 100 companies to provide deep, hands-on assessments that uncover real-world attack paths.

Why You Want to Buy It:

Bishop Fox’s expertise is unparalleled. They don’t just find vulnerabilities; they demonstrate the real-world impact by chaining them together to achieve specific objectives, such as compromising a domain controller.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
Objective-Based	Yes	Focus on achieving specific goals like compromising a critical server.
Red Team Expertise	Yes	One of the most respected red teaming firms in the industry.
Compliance Focus	No	Focus is on real-world risk, not just compliance.
Flexible Reporting	Yes	Provides both executive and in-depth technical reports.

Best For: Large enterprises with complex on-premises and hybrid environments that need a highly customized, technical deep-dive assessment from a world-class team.

Try Bishop Fox here → Bishop Fox Official Website

2. NCC Group

NCC Group is a global leader in cybersecurity and risk mitigation, with a strong presence in internal network penetration testing.

Their team of certified and highly experienced professionals offers a comprehensive approach, from vulnerability identification to deep-dive attack simulations.

NCC Group is well-regarded for its adherence to a wide range of regulatory frameworks, making it a reliable choice for compliance-driven organizations.

Why You Want to Buy It:

NCC Group’s reputation for technical excellence and its focus on helping clients meet stringent compliance requirements make it a safe and reliable choice for businesses in regulated industries.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
Objective-Based	Yes	Designs tests to achieve specific client objectives.
Red Team Expertise	Yes	A leader in red teaming and adversarial simulation.
Compliance Focus	Yes	Extensive experience with PCI, GDPR, and other frameworks.
Flexible Reporting	Yes	Provides clear, actionable reports for different audiences.

Best For: Global organizations that need a trusted partner with deep expertise in technical assurance and a strong track record of compliance-focused testing.

Try NCC Group here → NCC Group Official Website

3. NetSPI

NetSPI is a pioneer in Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS), and its internal network testing services are a core part of this platform.

NetSPI’s team of in-house experts uses a blend of manual and automated techniques to provide a continuous and scalable approach to internal pentesting.

Their platform, Resolve, provides real-time visibility into findings, making it easy to track, manage, and remediate vulnerabilities.

Why You Want to Buy It:

NetSPI’s PTaaS model allows for a more efficient and collaborative testing process. Instead of a one-off report, you get continuous insights and a centralized platform to manage all your vulnerabilities.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
Objective-Based	Yes	Designs tests to simulate real-world attacks.
Red Team Expertise	Yes	Offers a full suite of red team and adversary simulation services.
Compliance Focus	Yes	Supports PCI, SOC 2, and HIPAA compliance.
Flexible Reporting	Yes	Real-time findings and reporting via the Resolve platform.

Best For: Enterprises that need a scalable, continuous, and platform-driven approach to security testing across various domains.

Try NetSPI here → NetSPI Official Website

4. Coalfire

Coalfire is a cybersecurity firm with a strong focus on compliance and security assessments.

Their internal network penetration testing services are often performed to help organizations meet stringent regulatory requirements like FedRAMP, PCI, and SOC 2.

Coalfire’s experts combine a deep understanding of compliance frameworks with an attacker’s mindset to ensure that both technical and regulatory standards are met.

Why You Want to Buy It:

Coalfire’s deep expertise in compliance and its history of working with federal and highly-regulated clients make it an ideal partner for businesses that need to demonstrate their internal network security posture to auditors and regulators.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
Objective-Based	Yes	Aims to uncover vulnerabilities that pose a real-world threat.
Red Team Expertise	Yes	Offers adversary emulation and red teaming.
Compliance Focus	Yes	A leader in FedRAMP, PCI, and SOC 2 compliance.
Flexible Reporting	Yes	Provides reports tailored for compliance audits.

Best For: Organizations in highly regulated industries that need a cloud penetration test that meets strict compliance standards.

Try Coalfire here → Coalfire Official Website

5. IOActive

IOActive is a highly respected, research-led security firm known for its deep technical expertise and its ability to uncover complex vulnerabilities that others miss.

Their internal network penetration testing services go beyond standard checks to focus on finding sophisticated attack vectors.

IOActive’s team is often behind the discovery of high-profile vulnerabilities in industrial control systems and other critical infrastructure.

Why You Want to Buy It:

IOActive’s reputation is built on its research-driven approach. They don’t just run tools; they analyze your environment with a creative and adversarial mindset, often discovering zero-day vulnerabilities in the process.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
Objective-Based	Yes	Focused on finding exploitable vulnerabilities and attack paths.
Red Team Expertise	Yes	Team has a strong track record of discovering and responsibly disclosing vulnerabilities.
Compliance Focus	No	Focus is on deep technical analysis, not just compliance.
Flexible Reporting	Yes	Detailed reports with clear, technical findings.

Best For: Companies with complex or unique internal networks, such as those in manufacturing, aerospace, or critical infrastructure.

Try IOActive here → IOActive Official Website

6. MDSec

MDSec is a specialist in offensive security and is well-known for its deep technical expertise and contributions to the security community.

Their internal network penetration testing services are renowned for their thoroughness, with a particular focus on Active Directory security and complex privilege escalation techniques.

MDSec’s team is composed of some of the industry’s most respected professionals, and their work is often featured at top-tier conferences like Black Hat and DEF CON.

Why You Want to Buy It:

MDSec’s team is at the forefront of offensive security research.

Their expertise ensures that you’re not just getting a standard assessment, but a deep-dive analysis from a team that understands the latest attack techniques.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
Objective-Based	Yes	Tailors tests to find the most critical attack paths.
Red Team Expertise	Yes	A leader in red teaming and Active Directory security.
Compliance Focus	No	Focuses on technical security and research.
Flexible Reporting	Yes	Provides detailed technical reports and findings.

Best For: Security teams that need a highly technical and thorough assessment of their internal network, especially for complex Active Directory environments.

Try MDSec here → MDSec Official Website

7. Praetorian

Praetorian is an offensive security company that provides expert-led internal network penetration testing services.

Their methodology goes beyond compliance, focusing on identifying material risks that could lead to a real-world breach.

Praetorian’s team works with clients to understand their business context and prioritize vulnerabilities based on their true impact, providing clear and actionable remediation guidance.

Why You Want to Buy It:

Praetorian’s focus on Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) ensures that their assessments are not just a point-in-time snapshot.

Their deep technical expertise and focus on the most critical risks make them an ideal partner for securing high-value assets.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
Objective-Based	Yes	Focuses on achieving specific, real-world objectives.
Red Team Expertise	Yes	Offers a full suite of red team and adversarial services.
Compliance Focus	No	Aligns with business risk, not just compliance.
Flexible Reporting	Yes	Provides reports that prioritize vulnerabilities based on business risk.

Best For: Companies that want a strategic partner for offensive security, focusing on real-world risk reduction rather than just compliance.

Try Praetorian here → Praetorian Official Website

8. TrustedSec

TrustedSec is a highly regarded cybersecurity consulting firm known for its expert-led, hands-on penetration testing services.

Their approach to internal network security is highly customized, with consultants simulating real-world cyberattacks on a client’s environment.

TrustedSec is renowned for its detailed reporting and a strong focus on providing clear, prioritized remediation guidance.

Why You Want to Buy It:

TrustedSec’s reputation is built on the expertise of its consultants.

If you want a thorough, hands-on assessment from a firm that prioritizes a deep understanding of your unique environment, TrustedSec is an excellent choice.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
Objective-Based	Yes	Designs tests to achieve specific client goals.
Red Team Expertise	Yes	A well-known name in the offensive security community.
Compliance Focus	Yes	Assists with compliance for PCI, HIPAA, and SOC 2.
Flexible Reporting	Yes	Detailed, technical reports with clear remediation advice.

Best For: Companies that value a personalized, hands-on service from a team of highly-skilled and ethical hackers.

Try TrustedSec here → TrustedSec Official Website

9. Offensive Security

Offensive Security is a name synonymous with penetration testing. While best known for its Kali Linux and certifications like the OSCP, its professional services division offers expert-led internal network penetration testing.

The OffSec Services team is composed of highly skilled and experienced ethical hackers who can conduct complex and comprehensive assessments to uncover critical vulnerabilities.

Why You Want to Buy It:

When you hire Offensive Security, you’re getting a team that has trained a generation of hackers.

Their approach is rooted in real-world techniques and methodologies, ensuring a comprehensive and highly technical assessment.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
Objective-Based	Yes	Tests are designed to achieve specific goals.
Red Team Expertise	Yes	The company is a leader in offensive security training and methodology.
Compliance Focus	No	Focus is on technical security and vulnerability discovery.
Flexible Reporting	Yes	Provides detailed technical findings and recommendations.

Best For: Organizations that want to work with the pioneers of offensive security and leverage the deep, technical expertise of a team that lives and breathes hacking.

Try Offensive Security here → Offensive Security Official Website

10. Kroll

Kroll is a global leader in risk and financial advisory services, with a robust cybersecurity practice. Their internal network penetration testing services are backed by a unique advantage: insights from their front-line incident response and threat intelligence teams.

This allows Kroll’s testers to simulate the most current and relevant attack techniques, providing a highly realistic assessment of an organization’s internal defenses.

Why You Want to Buy It:

Kroll’s experience responding to thousands of cyber incidents gives it a unique advantage.

Their penetration tests are informed by real-world data on what attackers are actually doing, making their assessments highly realistic and relevant.

Feature	Yes/No	Specification
Objective-Based	Yes	Tests are guided by real-world threat intelligence.
Red Team Expertise	Yes	Backed by a strong incident response and threat intelligence practice.
Compliance Focus	Yes	Can help with compliance for various frameworks.
Flexible Reporting	Yes	Provides clear, objective-driven reports.

Best For: Companies that need a comprehensive security assessment that is informed by the latest threat intelligence and real-world breach data.

Try Kroll here → Kroll Official Website

Conclusion

In 2025, internal network penetration testing is a non-negotiable part of a mature cybersecurity program. While firewalls and endpoint security are important, a single misconfiguration or compromised credential can render them useless. The top companies on this list each offer a unique value proposition.

Firms like Bishop Fox, MDSec, and Offensive Security provide deep, research-backed technical expertise. In contrast, those like NetSPI, Kroll, and Coalfire offer a blend of technical skill and a platform-driven or compliance-focused approach.

Choosing the right partner depends on your organization’s specific needs, whether you’re a highly regulated enterprise, a fast-moving tech company, or a business with a complex hybrid environment.

The post 10 Best Internal Network Penetration Testing Companies in 2025 appeared first on Cyber Security News.

These tools provide real-time visibility into cloud infrastructure, enabling monitoring metrics such as resource utilization, application performance, and network traffic.

Cloud monitoring tools help identify and resolve issues quickly by offering customizable dashboards and alerts, ensuring optimal operation.

They often integrate with various cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, providing a unified view of multi-cloud environments.

Additionally, advanced analytics and reporting capabilities aid in capacity planning, compliance, and performance optimization, making them vital for efficient cloud management.

What Is A Cloud Monitoring Tool?

A cloud monitoring tool monitors the performance, availability, and security of cloud infrastructure, platforms, and applications. 

It provides visibility into the health and usage of cloud resources. Some examples of cloud monitoring tools are DataDog, New Relic, AppDynamics, Dynatrace, etc.

An example of a cloud monitoring tool is Amazon CloudWatch, which offers monitoring and management services for resources hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

It provides real-time monitoring of metrics, logs, and events for AWS resources like EC2 instances, RDS databases, and Lambda functions.

What Is An Example Of Cloud Monitoring?

An example of cloud monitoring is tracking metrics of a cloud-based virtual machine’s CPU usage, memory usage, disk usage, bandwidth, etc. The monitoring tool can alert you if these metrics exceed a threshold so you can take action.

It provides insights into better-managing cloud resources. Microsoft Azure’s Azure Monitor service is an example of cloud monitoring.

Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution that enables administrators to monitor the performance and availability of Azure resources like virtual machines, databases, and applications. 

It provides real-time insights into metrics like CPU usage, memory usage, and network traffic, as well as logs and events generated by Azure resources. 

Why Use Cloud Monitoring?

Cloud monitoring is crucial for organizations that rely on cloud-based applications and infrastructure. It enables administrators to monitor the performance and availability of cloud-based resources in real-time. 

This helps them identify and resolve issues quickly, minimizing downtime and ensuring the high availability of applications and infrastructure.

Cloud monitoring ensures that cloud-based applications and resources perform optimally and are available to end users. It enables administrators to identify and resolve issues quickly, minimize downtime, and optimize resource utilization. 

Additionally, cloud monitoring helps organizations meet compliance requirements, providing visibility into the security and performance of cloud-based resources.

What Are Monitoring Tools?

Monitoring tools are software applications or services that enable administrators to track and analyze the performance of various systems and applications.

These tools collect and analyze data from various sources, such as logs, metrics, and events, and provide insights into system performance and availability. Monitoring tools refer to various tools that monitor different aspects of systems and applications.

Examples include application performance monitoring (APM) tools, network monitoring tools, infrastructure monitoring tools, and security monitoring tools. 

What Is Cloud Monitoring, With An Example?

“Cloud monitoring” refers to monitoring cloud resources’ performance, availability, and health. It helps ensure that cloud services work optimally and provides insights to manage resources better.

For example, Google Cloud Monitoring provides real-time visibility into the performance and availability of resources hosted on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

It enables administrators to monitor metrics like CPU utilization, memory usage, and network traffic and set up alerts to notify them of any issues.

Cloud monitoring tracks and analyzes cloud-based applications and infrastructure performance and availability. Cloud monitoring tools specifically monitor the cloud infrastructure and the applications and services running on it.

What Is “Cloud Monitoring” In GCP?

In GCP, cloud monitoring refers to monitoring the performance and availability of resources hosted on the Google Cloud Platform. 

Google Cloud Monitoring provides a unified monitoring experience for GCP resources, allowing administrators to monitor metrics, logs, and events across multiple services, such as Compute Engine, Kubernetes Engine, and Cloud Storage.

An example of cloud monitoring in Google Cloud Platform is using Stackdriver. It provides metrics, dashboards, alerting, logging, and performance analysis to monitor GCP resources.

You can monitor metrics for Google Compute Engine VMs, Google Kubernetes Engine, Google Cloud Storage, App Engine, etc.

What Is Cloud Logging Vs. Monitoring?

Cloud logging collects, analyzes, and stores logs generated by cloud-based applications and resources. Cloud monitoring, on the other hand, is focused on tracking the performance and availability of those resources. 

Cloud monitoring helps administrators prevent issues affecting end users, while logging helps them debug and understand resource consumption. A complete cloud management plan requires cloud logging and monitoring.

Here Are Our Picks For The Top 10 Cloud Monitoring Tools

1. IBM Turbonomic: Automates resource management and optimization for the cloud, ensuring performance and cost efficiency.
2. LogicMonitor: Provides comprehensive cloud infrastructure monitoring with real-time insights and customizable dashboards.
3. Site24x7: Offers end-to-end cloud monitoring, including application performance, server health, and user experience.
4. Oracle Infrastructure Monitoring Cloud Service: Monitors Oracle Cloud and on-premises infrastructure, providing detailed metrics and alerts.
5. Google Cloud Operations: Integrates logging, monitoring, and diagnostics for Google Cloud services and applications.
6. F5 Distributed Cloud App Infrastructure: Enhances visibility and security for applications across multi-cloud environments.
7. CloudGuard Intelligence: Provides advanced threat detection and posture management for cloud environments.
8. Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring: Delivers real-time performance monitoring with AI-driven analytics for cloud infrastructure.
9. Sumo Logic: Offers continuous intelligence and unified monitoring for cloud applications and infrastructure.
10. InsightVM: Focuses on vulnerability management and risk assessment for cloud and on-premises environments.

1. IBM Turbonomic

IBM Turbonomic optimizes cloud resource performance and usage via a management platform and monitoring tool. It continuously monitors, analyzes, and optimizes cloud workloads and resources using AI and ML algorithms.

It collects data, analyzes it, optimizes resources, provides insights, and automates actions to ensure optimal performance and utilization of cloud-based workloads and resources.

It also collects data from various sources, such as cloud infrastructure, applications, and virtual machines.

Based on the analysis, IBM Turbonomic makes real-time decisions on allocating and optimizing cloud-based resources.

It automatically adjusts resource allocation based on workload demand, ensuring optimal performance and utilization.

It offers a dashboard that displays metrics like CPU utilization, memory usage, and network traffic, enabling administrators to monitor the health of their resources and identify issues quickly.

Why Do We Recommend It?

• Ensures continuous application performance with real-time, automated resource adjustments.
• Delivers significant cost optimization by reducing over-provisioning and cloud spend.
• Provides AI-driven, actionable insights for smarter decision-making and resource management.
• Empowers proactive IT operations through intelligent automation and reduced manual intervention.
• Offers seamless integration and optimization across multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

IBM Turbonomic – Trial / Demo

2. LogicMonitor

LogicMonitor is a cloud-based infrastructure monitoring tool that tracks servers, virtual machines, databases, networks, and apps.

It can monitor on-premise and cloud devices (AWS, Azure, GCP) and automatically discover infrastructure like servers, VMs, databases, etc.

LogicMonitor has many pre-built monitoring templates for standard infra and services, such as CPU, memory, disk usage, Nginx, MySQL, etc. These templates have the necessary metrics and thresholds predefined.

It comes with many pre-built dashboards to view the metrics and status of various devices and services. It also exposes a full REST API to manage the infrastructure monitoring programmatically.

It also has many integrations with tools like ServiceNow, Slack, PagerDuty, etc. LogicMonitor alerts on metric thresholds via email, SMS, pages, etc.

The alert dashboard displays and manages all alerts. Many pre-built reports provide infrastructure insights. Schedule regular email reports.

Why Do We Recommend It?

• Delivers unified observability for on-premises, cloud, and hybrid IT environments in a single platform.
• Offers highly automated, agentless monitoring with extensive out-of-the-box integrations for rapid deployment.
• Provides real-time, actionable alerts and deep performance insights that help prevent IT issues before they impact users.
• Features a scalable SaaS architecture, minimizing administrative overhead and enabling easy management as infrastructure grows.
• Enables powerful customization of dashboards, alerts, and reports to fit diverse enterprise needs and operational workflows.

LogicMonitor – Trial / Demo

3. Site24x7

Site24x7 is a robust cloud-based monitoring tool for websites, web applications, servers, networks, and IT infrastructure.

It provides a unified view of your systems’ health and performance through a simple, intuitive web console and mobile apps.

To start monitoring, first add the websites, servers, network devices, cloud resources, etc. that need monitoring. It allows a granular configuration of monitoring frequency to suit the exact needs.

Data from all monitoring locations is aggregated and analyzed in real-time to detect performance issues and outage events.

For events that demand immediate action, instant alerts are provided via email, SMS, phone calls, and mobile push notifications.

The maintenance scheduler allows you to pause monitoring during planned outages to avoid unwanted alerts temporarily—integrations with tools like PagerDuty, Opsgenie, Slack, etc.

Why Do We Recommend It?

• Provides unified monitoring for websites, servers, networks, and applications from a single platform.
• Offers real-time alerts and proactive issue detection to minimize downtime and business risk.
• Delivers both real user and synthetic monitoring for end-to-end digital experience insights.
• Easy to deploy, cloud-native, and highly scalable to match evolving infrastructure needs.
• Features customizable dashboards, integrations, and mobile access for flexible monitoring and reporting.

Site24x7 – Trial / Demo

4. Oracle Infrastructure Monitoring Cloud Service

Oracle Corporation offers OIMCS, an infrastructure monitoring cloud service. It monitors physical servers, virtual machines, applications, and networks from a single platform.

OIMCS gathers data from servers, apps, and networks. Agents collect data from monitored systems and send it to the OIMCS cloud service for analysis.

After processing the data, insights assist in rapidly identifying and fixing issues. It requires installing and configuring agents on monitored systems.

The OIMCS cloud service analyzes performance data from these agents. OIMCS online console displays performance data and analyzes it to find faults.

OIMCS offers server, network, application, log, and other monitoring capabilities. It also provides customizable alerts for high CPU utilization and low storage space.

OIMCS also provides a range of analytics tools, including dashboards, reports, and visualizations, to help understand and analyze your infrastructure’s performance. 

Why Do We Recommend It?

• Enables unified, real-time monitoring across on-premises and cloud environments from a single platform.
• Provides proactive alerts and customizable alarm rules to detect and resolve issues before they impact users.
• Offers purpose-built dashboards and clear visualizations for comprehensive infrastructure health and performance insights.
• Supports extensive, heterogeneous monitoring—including hosts, databases, application servers, and more—regardless of vendor.
• Leverages machine learning and automated analytics to facilitate rapid troubleshooting and optimize infrastructure operations.

Oracle Infrastructure Monitoring Cloud Service – Trial / Demo

5. Google Cloud Operations

GCP offers Google Cloud Operations (GCO) to monitor cloud resources and applications. It monitors GCP project performance, uptime, and health.

This displays CPU, memory, and network traffic data for all GCP resources. It helps create charts, set alerts on metrics, and more.

Users can set up alerts on metrics so that they get notifications when a metric crosses a threshold. This helps to detect issues early. They can configure alerts for a single resource or group of resources.

GCP defines Service Level Indicators (SLIs) for its services. Operations Monitoring automatically monitors these SLIs and alerts users of any issues.

For example, it can alert users about high CPU usage in Compute Engine VMs or increased latency in BigQuery queries.

It allows configuring uptime checks to regularly ping the HTTP(S) endpoints or TCP ports from multiple locations.

Operations Monitoring will then alert if downtime is detected for those endpoints. This helps to monitor the availability of web applications and services.

Operations Monitoring provides predefined dashboards for many GCP services, such as Compute Engine, App Engine, Cloud SQL, BigQuery, etc. These dashboards give an overview of the health and performance of those services.

Why Do We Recommend It?

• Delivers unified monitoring, logging, tracing, and alerting for cloud-native and hybrid environments within a single platform.
• Provides real-time insights and intelligent automation to help quickly detect, troubleshoot, and resolve application and infrastructure issues.
• Scales effortlessly with your infrastructure, leveraging Google’s globally distributed, highly reliable cloud network for outstanding availability and performance.
• Offers built-in AI/ML-driven analytics to proactively identify anomalies and optimize operations, ensuring application health and reliability.
• Integrates seamlessly with Google Cloud services, automating maintenance, improving security, and reducing operational overhead for DevOps and SRE teams.

Google Cloud Operations – Trial / Demo

6. F5 Distributed Cloud App Infrastructure

F5 Distributed Cloud App Infrastructure Protection (DCAIP) is a cloud monitoring tool offered by F5 Networks. It provides threat detection and mitigation for applications and infrastructure hosted in public and private clouds.

DCAIP discovers and monitors applications and services deployed across cloud environments. It provides a consolidated view of the cloud app inventory, including app topology, configurations, and security risks.

DCAIP continuously checks cloud infrastructure and applications for vulnerabilities. It detects security misconfigurations, API vulnerabilities, weak passwords, threat intelligence, etc.

All major cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP can contain vulnerabilities. It monitors compliance with standards like PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, etc., for your cloud deployments.

It alerts you about compliance violations and provides reports to help with audits. When a threat is detected, it provides recommendations and tools to help mitigate it.

The dashboard aggregates vulnerabilities, threats, compliance issues, application topology, and other information to give a consolidated view of the security posture.

Why Do We Recommend It?

• Secures applications and infrastructure across multi-cloud, data center, and edge environments with unified protection.
• Delivers real-time visibility and deep observability for threat detection and compliance across the entire app stack.
• Simplifies operations with a centralized SaaS-based console for managing security, networking, and app delivery.
• Enables seamless, policy-driven app connectivity, orchestration, and migrations across diverse environments.
• Enhances performance and reduces complexity with integrated automation, machine learning, and managed global services.

F5 Distributed Cloud App Infrastructure – Trial / Demo

7. CloudGuard Intelligence

CloudGuard Intelligence Monitoring is a cybersecurity solution that provides enhanced threat detection and response capabilities for cloud-based environments.

It utilizes machine learning algorithms and threat intelligence to identify and mitigate security threats in real-time.

The solution is part of Check Point Software Technologies’ CloudGuard suite of products and services designed to provide comprehensive security for cloud-based applications and infrastructures.

It collects data from various sources, including cloud infrastructure, network traffic, and user activity logs.

The data is then analyzed to identify security threats and anomalies. It prevents threats across public cloud environments like AWS, Azure, and GCP.

It detects and blocks threats like malware, botnets, phishing, etc., using Check Point’s threat intelligence and sandboxing technology.

It also continuously monitors cloud environments in real-time, providing alerts and notifications when it detects potential security threats. It also provides actionable insights and recommendations for remediation.

The solution can automatically respond to security threats by blocking malicious traffic or isolating compromised resources, which helps to minimize the impact of security incidents and reduce the time required for incident response.

Why Do We Recommend It?

• Provides real-time threat detection and automated blocking of cyber threats in cloud environments.
• Empowers proactive threat hunting and rapid investigation with advanced analytics and intuitive visualization.
• Delivers automated incident response and remediation to quickly contain and resolve security incidents.
• Integrates global threat intelligence and AI-driven enrichment to prioritize risks and minimize false positives.
• Offers unified security coverage across multi-cloud platforms, reducing breach detection time and streamlining operations.

CloudGuard Intelligence – Trial / Demo

8. Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is a cloud monitoring tool for infrastructure, workloads, and cloud environments. Its analytics and automation capabilities ensure security, compliance, and peak performance.

Splunk collects data from various sources, including servers, network devices, and applications.

The data is collected in real-time, providing up-to-date insights into the performance and availability of infrastructure components.

The solution provides tools and features for root cause analysis, allowing users to quickly identify the cause of performance issues and take corrective action.

Collaboration features such as shared dashboards and alerts allow multiple users to work together to resolve issues.

It provides real-time insights into the performance and availability of infrastructure components, helping organizations to identify and resolve issues before they impact business operations proactively.

Why Do We Recommend It?

• Enables real-time, full-stack monitoring and instant, actionable alerts to detect and resolve issues before they impact users.
• Deeply integrates with 300+ cloud services and offers out-of-the-box dashboards for fast, comprehensive visualization.
• Scales efficiently with hybrid and multi-cloud environments, providing unified observability across all assets.
• Accelerates troubleshooting and root cause analysis with seamless data correlation, reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR).
• Supports open standards and delivers flexible, high-performance analytics for proactive infrastructure optimization.

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring – Trial / Demo

9. Sumo Logic

Sumo logic gives real-time insights into cloud-based component performance and availability, assisting enterprises in discovering and fixing issues before they impair business operations.

It provides customizable dashboards and visualizations of the data, allowing users to monitor the health and performance of their cloud-based components quickly, and it also creates custom reports and sets up automated alerts to notify them of issues. 

It monitors on-premises and cloud-based applications. It collects applications’ logs, metrics, traces, and events to provide insights into their health, performance, and issues. 

It provides analytics and dashboards to investigate security incidents and role-based access control to ensure only authorized users can access data and analytics.

Why Do We Recommend It?

• Delivers unified log analytics, monitoring, and security across multi-cloud and on-premises environments from a single platform.
• Employs machine learning and advanced analytics for real-time anomaly detection, faster troubleshooting, and proactive insights.
• Scales seamlessly with a cloud-native, multi-tenant architecture—adapting effortlessly to changing data volumes and business growth.
• Offers hundreds of out-of-the-box integrations for fast deployment, including for AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, databases, and more.
• Features flexible, consumption-based pricing that aligns with actual usage and avoids overprovisioning or hidden costs.

Sumo Logic – Trial / Demo

10. InsightVM

InsightVM, formerly Nexpose, is a cloud-based vulnerability management and assessment tool designed to help organizations identify and remediate security risks across their IT infrastructure.

This cloud monitoring tool uses active scanning, passive tracking, and agent-based discovery to identify all assets within an organization’s network, including physical, virtual, and cloud-based devices.

InsightVM performs comprehensive vulnerability scans to identify potential security risks across all assets and prioritizes identified vulnerabilities based on their severity, exploitability, and potential impact on the organization’s business operations.

It helps organizations track the status of ongoing remediation efforts and provides recommendations for mitigating identified vulnerabilities.

It can also automatically discover hosts, virtual machines, containers, mobile devices, web applications, etc., in the network.

Why Do We Recommend It?

• Delivers continuous, real-time vulnerability assessment across all environments—cloud, on-premises, remote, and containers.
• Prioritizes risks with advanced analytics, dynamic risk scoring, and up-to-date threat intelligence.
• Automates remediation workflows and integrates seamlessly with IT, DevOps, and security tools for rapid response.
• Offers customizable dashboards, detailed reporting, and live exposure analytics for clear, actionable insights.
• Scales efficiently and is easy to deploy, providing comprehensive coverage without excessive overhead.

InsightVM – Trial / Demo

The post 10 Best Cloud Monitoring Tools in 2025 appeared first on Cyber Security News.

While we’re debating whether AI will change cybersecurity, AWS has quietly built something that analyzes 360 trillion telemetry traces daily.

They’re not talking about potential. They’re running it. Here’s what’s actually happening behind the scenes.

When people ask what is AWS security at this scale, the numbers tell a story that goes beyond the usual tech hype, and the real-world results are starting to reshape how we think about defense at scale.

We’ll walk through the operational reality, examine the automation that’s cutting incident response from hours to minutes, and look at how this played out during a live attack campaign.

When Every API Call Is A Security Checkpoint

Think about your busiest day at work. Now multiply that by a trillion.

AWS’s security infrastructure doesn’t just handle volume it thrives on it. In the last six months alone, they blocked 2.4 trillion scanning requests.

That’s not a typo. We’re talking about threat detection that operates at a scale most of us can’t even conceptualize.

But here’s what makes this interesting. Each of those 1.2 billion API calls per second isn’t just processed it’s analyzed for fine-grained permissions.

The system checks who’s asking, what they’re asking for, and whether they should get it. Every single time.

The computational challenge is staggering. How do you analyze 360 trillion data points daily without creating bottlenecks? Traditional security monitoring would collapse under this load.

Even the most sophisticated human-driven security operations centers can’t operate at this velocity.

That’s where the story gets more compelling. AWS didn’t just scale up they fundamentally changed how security analysis works.

The AI Automation Achievement

Remember when security incident triage took most of your day? AWS cut that from 9.5 hours to minutes per log.

Not through wishful thinking or clever marketing. Through automation that actually works. Their AI-powered log analysis now delivers 50x productivity improvement, and we can see exactly how they did it.

Take new generative AI capabilities. Instead of parsing through endless log files, security teams get natural language summaries of what happened.

The AI identifies potential issues automatically and presents them in plain English. No more hunting through thousands of entries to find the needle.

Other platforms have learned to map attack sequences across multiple stages. It correlates events that might seem unrelated, building timeline views that reveal sophisticated multi-stage attacks.

In just 90 days, it identified 13,000 high-confidence attack sequences patterns that traditional monitoring might have missed entirely.

The practical impact? Security teams aren’t drowning in alerts anymore. AWS Security Hub now provides unified threat management across GuardDuty, IAM, Shield, and many other services.

Instead of juggling multiple dashboards, analysts get prioritized, actionable insights from a single interface.

But perhaps the most telling demonstration came during an actual attack campaign.

How AI Stopped A Live Encryption Attack Campaign

Here’s where theory meets reality.

AWS detected something unusual: threat actors were using valid credentials to re-encrypt S3 objects with server-side encryption using client-provided keys.

It’s a clever attack if you can’t steal the data, encrypt it with your own key and hold it for ransom.

Most security systems would struggle with this. The attackers had valid credentials. They weren’t technically breaking in.

They were just… encrypting things. Which looks legitimate until you realize what’s happening.

AWS’s AI-driven detection spotted the pattern. Not because someone programmed it to look for this specific attack, but because the system learned to recognize anomalous behavior across multiple data sources.

The timeline correlation capabilities revealed the attack sequence, even though individual actions appeared normal.

The response was swift. AWS deployed what they call “active defense tools” that prevented “a high percentage of attempts from succeeding”.

The key word there is “prevented” not just detected after the fact.

This capability is now baked into enhanced threat detection for Amazon EKS container environments. The system that learned to stop encryption attacks is expanding its reach.

Actually, there’s something worth noting here the speed of adaptation impresses me more than the initial detection.

The Defender’s Advantage In An AI-First Security World

We’re witnessing something that changes the fundamental equation in cybersecurity.

For decades, attackers held the advantage. They only needed to find one vulnerability, while defenders had to secure everything.

They could move fast and break things, while security teams were always playing catch-up.

But when you can analyze threats faster than attackers can evolve them, the game changes. AWS’s AI-driven defenses now operate at machine speed across data sets that exceed human comprehension.

While attackers still think in human timeframe planning campaigns over weeks or months these defenses adapt in real-time.

The broader context matters too. Organizations are now prioritizing generative AI as their top spending priority for 2025, with 45% of global IT leaders shifting budget allocation away from traditional cybersecurity.

But here’s the twist: the most effective AI implementations are happening within security operations themselves.

Consider this: what happens when your defensive capabilities exceed the attacker’s ability to innovate? When security systems can process more threat intelligence in a day than a human analyst could review in a lifetime?

We’re finding out. And the early results suggest that defenders might finally have the upper hand.

The post How AI Is Redefining Threat Detection In The Cloud Era appeared first on Cyber Security News.

The vulnerability, now remediated, affected Code Editor’s integrated services, including Resource Manager, Functions, and Data Science, demonstrating how seemingly isolated cloud development tools can become attack vectors.

Key Takeaways
1. Oracle Cloud Code Editor's file upload lacked CSRF protection, allowing 1-click malicious file uploads.
2. Enabled Remote Code Execution and potential compromise of integrated OCI services.
3. Oracle added mandatory X-CSRF-Token headers to prevent cross-origin attacks.

Oracle Code Editor Vulnerability

The vulnerability stemmed from Oracle Code Editor’s deep integration with Cloud Shell, where both services share the same underlying file system and user session context.

While this tight coupling was designed to provide a seamless developer experience, it created an unexpected attack surface that researchers exploited.

Tenable’s investigation began with a simple question: if developers can upload files easily through Code Editor, could attackers do the same? This led to the discovery of a /file-upload endpoint in Code Editor that lacked Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) defenses, unlike Cloud Shell’s properly secured upload mechanism.

The critical component at the heart of this vulnerability was the Cloud Shell router (router.cloudshell.us-ashburn-1.oci.oraclecloud.com), which accepted HTTP POST requests containing multipart/form-data payloads. 

The router used a CS-ProxyChallenge cookie configured with SameSite=None attribute, offering no protection against cross-site requests from authenticated users.

The exploitation path was remarkably straightforward. Attackers could create malicious HTML pages that, when visited by authenticated OCI users, would automatically upload malicious files to the victim’s Cloud Shell environment without their knowledge.

The attack utilized a crafted HTTP request:

Researchers demonstrated how attackers could override .bashrc files to establish reverse shells, gaining interactive access to Cloud Shell and leveraging victim credentials for lateral movement across OCI services using the OCI CLI.

Protection Measures

Oracle responded to the vulnerability by implementing additional security measures, specifically requiring a custom HTTP header x-csrf-token with value csrf-value for all relevant requests. 

This change effectively mitigates CSRF attacks since browsers cannot automatically include custom headers in cross-origin requests without proper CORS configuration. The vulnerability’s impact extended beyond Cloud Shell to Code Editor’s integrated services. 

Since these services operate on the same shared file system, malicious payloads could compromise Resource Manager workspaces, Functions deployments, and Data Science environments, creating a multi-surface threat across OCI’s developer toolkit.

This incident highlights the security challenges inherent in cloud service integrations, where convenience features can inadvertently expand attack surfaces beyond their intended scope.

Boost detection, reduce alert fatigue, accelerate response; all with an interactive sandbox built for security teams -> Try ANY.RUN Now 

The post 1-Click Oracle Cloud Code Editor RCE Vulnerability Lets Attackers Upload Malicious Files appeared first on Cyber Security News.

As cyber threats evolve and remote work becomes the norm, choosing the right cloud VPN provider is crucial for safeguarding sensitive data and ensuring seamless connectivity across the globe.

This comprehensive guide reviews the 10 best cloud VPN providers of 2025, focusing on their specifications, features, and unique advantages.

Whether you’re looking for speed, privacy, or advanced security, this article will help you make an informed decision.

In today’s digital landscape, the demand for robust online privacy and secure data transmission has never been higher.

Cloud VPN providers offer a scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solution to protect your online activities from hackers, ISPs, and government surveillance.

With the right VPN, you can access geo-restricted content, safeguard confidential business communications, and maintain anonymity online.

Selecting a top-tier VPN is not just about encryption; it’s also about speed, ease of use, customer support, and compatibility with various devices and platforms.

As the VPN market grows, so does the challenge of finding a provider that truly fits your needs. This article breaks down the best options, giving you a clear comparison and actionable insights for 2025.

Comparison Table: Top 10 Cloud VPN Providers 2025

1. NordVPN

NordVPN stands at the forefront of cloud VPN technology, renowned for its powerful security protocols, vast server network, and exceptional performance.

With over 7,800 servers in 125+ countries, NordVPN ensures fast, reliable, and secure connections for users worldwide.

Its commitment to privacy is reinforced by a strict no-logs policy and regular third-party audits.

NordVPN also bundles advanced features like Meshnet, Threat Protection, and Double VPN, making it a versatile choice for both individuals and businesses.

NordVPN’s user-friendly apps are available for all major platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.

Specifications

• Servers: 7,800+ in 125+ countries
• Protocols: OpenVPN, NordLynx (WireGuard), IKEv2/IPSec
• Simultaneous Connections: 10
• No-Logs Policy: Yes
• Kill Switch: Yes

Reason to Buy

• Military-grade encryption for maximum security
• Reliable access to streaming platforms and geo-restricted content
• Fast speeds for streaming, gaming, and large file transfers
• 24/7 customer support with live chat

Features

• Threat Protection against malware and trackers
• Double VPN and Onion Over VPN for advanced privacy
• Meshnet for secure remote access and file sharing
• Dedicated IP and obfuscated servers

Best For: All-around security, privacy, and speed

🔗 Try NordVPN here → NordVPN Official Website

2. Surfshark

Surfshark has rapidly gained popularity for its unlimited device connections and affordable pricing.

It offers a comprehensive suite of privacy tools, including CleanWeb ad blocker, MultiHop for double encryption, and Camouflage Mode to mask VPN usage.

With 3,200+ servers in 100 countries, Surfshark delivers consistent speeds and robust security features, making it a top choice for families, small businesses, and power users.

Surfshark’s intuitive apps work seamlessly across desktops, mobiles, and smart TVs.

The service is especially favored for bypassing censorship and accessing content in restrictive regions, thanks to its NoBorders Mode and reliable obfuscation technology.

Specifications

• Servers: 3,200+ in 100 countries
• Protocols: WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2/IPSec
• Simultaneous Connections: Unlimited
• No-Logs Policy: Yes
• Kill Switch: Yes

Reason to Buy

• Unlimited device connections on one account
• Advanced privacy features at a budget-friendly price
• Strong streaming and torrenting support
• 24/7 live chat support

Features

• CleanWeb ad and malware blocker
• MultiHop double VPN routing
• Camouflage and NoBorders modes for bypassing restrictions
• Built-in antivirus and alternative ID protection

Best For: Large households, streaming, and privacy enthusiasts

🔗 Try Surfshark here → Surfshark Official Website

3. ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN is renowned for its lightning-fast speeds, robust security, and user-friendly interface.

Operating 3,000+ servers across 94 countries, it’s a favorite among streamers, travelers, and professionals who demand consistent, high-performance connections.

ExpressVPN’s proprietary Lightway protocol ensures minimal speed loss and enhanced reliability, even on unstable networks.

The provider’s strict no-logs policy, TrustedServer technology, and 256-bit AES encryption guarantee top-tier data protection.

ExpressVPN is compatible with a wide range of devices, including routers, gaming consoles, and smart TVs, making it a versatile solution for any environment.

Specifications

• Servers: 3,000+ in 94 countries
• Protocols: Lightway, OpenVPN, IKEv2
• Simultaneous Connections: 8
• No-Logs Policy: Yes
• Kill Switch: Yes

Reason to Buy

• Exceptional speed and reliability for streaming and gaming
• TrustedServer technology for enhanced privacy
• Easy-to-use apps for all platforms
• 30-day money-back guarantee

Features

• Split tunneling for selective app protection
• Advanced leak protection (DNS, IPv6, WebRTC)
• Built-in password manager
• 24/7 customer support

Best For: Streaming, international travel, and privacy

🔗 Try ExpressVPN here → ExpressVPN Official Website

4. Proton VPN

Proton VPN is a privacy-focused provider developed by the team behind ProtonMail. It offers a transparent, open-source platform with a strict no-logs policy and servers in over 117 countries.

Proton VPN stands out for its Secure Core architecture, which routes traffic through privacy-friendly countries, and its support for Tor over VPN.

The service is ideal for users who prioritize transparency and security.

Proton VPN’s free plan is one of the most generous in the industry, while its paid plans unlock advanced features like high-speed servers, streaming support, and up to 10 simultaneous connections.

Specifications

• Servers: 3,000+ in 117 countries
• Protocols: OpenVPN, IKEv2/IPSec, WireGuard
• Simultaneous Connections: 10
• No-Logs Policy: Yes
• Kill Switch: Yes

Reason to Buy

• Secure Core servers for enhanced privacy
• Open-source apps with regular security audits
• Generous free plan with no data limits
• Excellent streaming and torrenting capabilities

Features

• Tor over VPN integration
• NetShield ad and malware blocker
• Forward secrecy and strong encryption
• Multi-platform support

Best For: Privacy advocates, journalists, and researchers

🔗 Try Proton VPN here → Proton VPN Official Website

5. Private Internet Access (PIA)

Private Internet Access is celebrated for its customizable security settings, vast server network, and affordable long-term plans.

With over 3,000 servers in 91 countries, PIA offers reliable speeds and robust privacy protections, including a strict no-logs policy and open-source apps.

PIA supports unlimited simultaneous connections, making it perfect for tech-savvy users and large teams.

Its advanced features, such as split tunneling, dedicated IPs, and MACE ad blocker, provide comprehensive control over your online experience.

Specifications

• Servers: 3,000+ in 91 countries
• Protocols: WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2/IPSec
• Simultaneous Connections: Unlimited
• No-Logs Policy: Yes
• Kill Switch: Yes

Reason to Buy

• Unlimited device connections
• Highly customizable security and privacy settings
• Affordable subscription plans
• Open-source transparency

Features

• MACE ad and tracker blocker
• Split tunneling for granular control
• Dedicated IP option
• SOCKS5 proxy included

Best For: Power users, teams, and advanced privacy control

🔗 Try Private Internet Access here → PIA Official Website

6. CyberGhost

CyberGhost is known for its user-friendly interface and extensive server network, boasting over 11,500 servers in 100+ countries.

It’s designed for both beginners and advanced users, offering one-click protection and specialized servers for streaming, torrenting, and gaming.

CyberGhost’s strict no-logs policy, strong encryption, and built-in ad blocker ensure a secure and private browsing experience.

The service supports up to 7 devices simultaneously and provides dedicated IP options for enhanced anonymity.

Specifications

• Servers: 11,500+ in 100+ countries
• Protocols: WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2/IPSec
• Simultaneous Connections: 7
• No-Logs Policy: Yes
• Kill Switch: Yes

Reason to Buy

• Massive global server coverage
• Specialized servers for streaming and torrenting
• User-friendly apps for all devices
• 45-day money-back guarantee

Features

• Built-in ad and malware blocker
• NoSpy servers for extra security
• Dedicated IP addresses
• 24/7 customer support

Best For: Beginners, streaming, and global access

🔗 Try CyberGhost here → CyberGhost Official Website

7. IPVanish

IPVanish offers a robust VPN solution with a focus on speed, security, and unlimited device connections.

With 2,200+ servers in 75+ countries, IPVanish provides reliable access to global content and strong privacy protections, including a strict no-logs policy and 256-bit AES encryption.

The provider’s intuitive apps cater to all major platforms, and its unlimited simultaneous connections make it a great choice for families and small businesses.

IPVanish also includes advanced features like split tunneling and automatic IP cycling.

Specifications

• Servers: 2,200+ in 75+ countries
• Protocols: WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2/IPSec
• Simultaneous Connections: Unlimited
• No-Logs Policy: Yes
• Kill Switch: Yes

Reason to Buy

• Unlimited device connections
• Strong security and privacy features
• Fast speeds for streaming and downloads
• 24/7 customer support

Features

• Split tunneling for selective protection
• Automatic IP address cycling
• SOCKS5 proxy included
• User-friendly interface

Best For: Families, small businesses, and high-speed streaming

🔗 Try IPVanish here → IPVanish Official Website

8. VyprVPN

VyprVPN is a Switzerland-based provider renowned for its proprietary Chameleon protocol, which defeats VPN blocking and throttling.

With over 700 servers in 70+ locations, VyprVPN offers reliable access to geo-restricted content and strong privacy protections.

VyprVPN’s no-logs policy, audited by independent firms, ensures your data remains private.

The service supports up to 10 simultaneous connections and provides advanced features like VyprDNS and NAT Firewall for an extra layer of security.

Specifications

• Servers: 700+ in 70+ locations
• Protocols: Chameleon, WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2
• Simultaneous Connections: 10
• No-Logs Policy: Yes
• Kill Switch: Yes

Reason to Buy

• Proprietary Chameleon protocol for bypassing censorship
• Independently audited no-logs policy
• Strong privacy and security features
• 30-day money-back guarantee

Features

• VyprDNS for secure DNS queries
• NAT Firewall for added protection
• Public Wi-Fi protection
• 24/7 customer support

Best For: Censorship bypass, privacy, and secure browsing

🔗 Try VyprVPN here → VyprVPN Official Website

9. Mullvad

Mullvad is a privacy-first VPN provider that emphasizes anonymity and transparency.

It requires no personal information to sign up and accepts anonymous payments, including cash and cryptocurrencies.

Mullvad operates a network of 600+ servers in 40+ countries, all running on RAM-only infrastructure for maximum security.

Mullvad’s open-source apps and commitment to transparency make it a favorite among privacy advocates and tech-savvy users.

The service supports up to 5 simultaneous connections and offers strong encryption and leak protection.

Specifications

• Servers: 600+ in 40+ countries
• Protocols: WireGuard, OpenVPN
• Simultaneous Connections: 5
• No-Logs Policy: Yes
• Kill Switch: Yes

Reason to Buy

• No personal information required for signup
• Transparent, open-source software
• Strong privacy and security features
• Flat-rate pricing with no upsells

Features

• RAM-only servers for enhanced security
• Anonymous payment options
• IPv6 and DNS leak protection
• Open-source apps

Best For: Privacy purists, anonymous browsing, and open-source advocates

🔗 Try Mullvad here → Mullvad Official Website

10. Windscribe

Windscribe offers a flexible VPN solution with both free and paid plans. Its network spans 110+ locations in 63 countries, providing reliable speeds and robust privacy protections.

Windscribe’s unique features include R.O.B.E.R.T. (a customizable ad and malware blocker), split tunneling, and secure hotspot functionality.

Windscribe supports unlimited device connections and offers a generous free plan with up to 10GB of data per month.

Its user-friendly apps and strong encryption make it a solid choice for beginners and advanced users alike.

Specifications

• Servers: 110+ locations in 63 countries
• Protocols: WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2
• Simultaneous Connections: Unlimited
• No-Logs Policy: Yes
• Kill Switch: Yes

Reason to Buy

• Generous free plan with robust features
• Unlimited device connections
• Customizable ad and malware blocking
• Flexible pricing and build-a-plan option

Features

• R.O.B.E.R.T. customizable blocker
• Split tunneling for selective protection
• Secure hotspot and proxy gateway
• Multi-platform support

Best For: Flexible plans, free usage, and customizable protection

🔗 Try Windscribe here → Windscribe Official Website

Conclusion

Choosing the right cloud VPN provider in 2025 is essential for maintaining online privacy, security, and unrestricted access to global content.

The options reviewed above represent the best in the industry, each excelling in different areas such as speed, privacy, device compatibility, and user experience.

Whether you’re a business professional, remote worker, or privacy enthusiast, there’s a VPN on this list tailored to your needs.

When selecting a VPN, consider your primary use case be it streaming, torrenting, bypassing censorship, or securing business communications.

Look for providers with transparent privacy policies, strong encryption, and a proven track record of reliability.

By investing in a reputable cloud VPN, you can enjoy peace of mind, knowing your data and online activities are protected in an increasingly connected world.

Embrace the future of secure internet access with one of these top 10 cloud VPN providers.

With the right choice, you’ll enjoy seamless connectivity, enhanced privacy, and the freedom to explore the web without boundaries.

The post 10 Best Cloud VPN Providers – 2025 appeared first on Cyber Security News.

Microsoft unveiled significant security enhancements for Windows 365 Cloud PCs on June 18, 2025, introducing new default configurations that prioritize data protection and system integrity. 

The updates include disabling clipboard, drive, USB, and printer redirections by default, while enabling advanced security features like virtualization-based security (VBS), Credential Guard, and hypervisor-protected code integrity (HVCI) for Windows 11 gallery images.

Stricter Redirection Policies to Prevent Data Exfiltration

The most notable change involves disabling four key redirection types by default for all newly provisioned and reprovisioned Windows 365 Cloud PCs. 

Clipboard, drive, USB, and printer redirections will be automatically disabled to minimize the risks of data exfiltration and malware injection. 

This security-first approach aligns with Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative (SFI), which emphasizes having security protections enabled and enforced by default.

The rollout will begin gradually in the second half of 2025, with IT administrators receiving advance notification through banners displayed in the Microsoft Intune Admin Center. 

These banners will appear on provisioning policy, individual device action, and bulk action pages, providing links to documentation for overriding the default settings through Intune device configuration policies or Group Policy Objects (GPOs).

IT administrators who need to restore redirection capabilities can manage settings through two primary methods: the Intune Settings Catalog or traditional GPO configurations. 

The system is designed to allow Intune to sync and implement administrator-defined settings after initial provisioning, overriding the restrictive defaults when policies are properly configured.

Advanced Virtualization Security Features 

Since May 2025, Microsoft has been automatically enabling three critical security technologies on new Windows 365 Cloud PCs running Windows 11 gallery images. 

Virtualization-based security (VBS) creates a secure memory enclave using hardware virtualization to protect critical system processes from advanced threats and malicious exploits.

Credential Guard leverages VBS infrastructure to secure authentication credentials, significantly reducing the risk of credential theft and lateral movement attacks within enterprise networks. 

Meanwhile, hypervisor-protected code integrity (HVCI), also known as memory integrity, ensures only verified code can execute at the kernel level, preventing malicious exploits from compromising system integrity.

The new security defaults will affect user workflows, particularly for organizations that previously relied on seamless file transfers and device connectivity between local machines and Cloud PCs. 

Microsoft recommends that IT teams communicate these changes proactively to end users and establish clear procedures for requesting redirection enablement when business requirements necessitate specific connectivity options.

For Windows 365 Frontline Cloud PCs operating in shared mode, the implementation varies depending on the reprovisioning method used. 

Direct reprovisioning from the device overview page will maintain existing policy configurations, while reprovisioning from the provisioning policy page will apply the new restrictive defaults. 

This distinction allows administrators to maintain granular control over security posture across different deployment scenarios.

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Released on June 17, 2025, this major update redefines what a modern private cloud platform can deliver by combining public cloud flexibility with on-premises control, governance, and cost efficiency. 

VCF 9.0 introduces a unified operational experience, streamlined deployment processes, and enhanced performance capabilities designed to address the growing demands of AI and data-intensive workloads.

Transform Infrastructure Performance

At the foundation of VCF 9.0 are several groundbreaking performance enhancements that maximize hardware efficiency and workload density. 

Advanced NVMe Memory Tiering enables organizations to extend memory pools with NVMe storage, creating a cost-effective second tier that allows compute-intensive applications to maintain optimal performance while reducing expensive DRAM requirements. 

This innovation particularly benefits high-frequency trading engines, in-memory analytics, and JVM-heavy applications.

The introduction of vSAN Global Deduplication represents another significant advancement, now spanning across entire clusters rather than just individual disks. 

This technology identifies and eliminates duplicate data blocks globally, substantially reducing storage footprints without the performance penalties typically associated with post-process deduplication engines. 

For data-intensive operations, Enhanced Data Paths optimize east-west traffic through kernel improvements and optional DPU offload capabilities, reducing latency for AI pipelines and microservice meshes by minimizing switch hops.

Unified Management Experience

VCF 9.0 introduces a revolutionary single-interface approach to private cloud operations through the new VCF Operations console. 

This consolidated management platform serves as the central hub for day-to-day administration, troubleshooting, and diagnostics across the entire infrastructure fleet. 

The streamlined deployment process begins with the VCF Installer, which enables full-stack implementation in hours rather than weeks.

Fleet Management capabilities have been significantly enhanced, allowing administrators to efficiently deploy patches across thousands of hosts with predictive pre-checks and controlled blast-radius protections. 

Certificate management, configuration drift detection, and live patching are now centralized, eliminating the need to navigate multiple interfaces. 

The platform also introduces comprehensive cost management features with real-time resource consumption metrics that can be allocated to specific business units for accurate chargeback and showback.

Enhanced Security Features

VCF 9.0 delivers a true cloud consumption experience through the VCF Automation interface, which provides developers with a single API endpoint for all provisioning requests while maintaining consistent policy enforcement and cost tracking. 

Pre-built blueprints for databases, AI stacks, and Kubernetes clusters enable self-service deployment in minutes, with teams able to customize variables while inheriting security and compliance controls automatically.

Security enhancements are pervasive throughout the platform, anchored by the new Security Operations Dashboard that provides real-time compliance scoring and attack surface visualization. 

Always-on configuration scanning continuously validates settings against industry standards like CIS and NIST, automatically detecting and potentially correcting drift. 

Platform-wide identity federation coupled with automated certificate lifecycle management eliminates manual trust maintenance tasks, preventing outages caused by expired certificates while ensuring seamless single sign-on across all workload domains.

With VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, organizations gain a robust platform that not only simplifies infrastructure management but creates the foundation needed to run modern workloads with unprecedented control, performance optimization, and transparent cost management.

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The incident affected millions of users across Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Google Workspace products due to a null pointer exception in the Service Control binary that manages API authorization and quota policies.

Binary Crashes Cause Global Outage

The outage originated from Google’s Service Control system, a regional service responsible for authorizing API requests and enforcing quota policies across the company’s infrastructure. 

On May 29, 2025, engineers had deployed a new feature for additional quota policy checks, but the code lacked proper error handling and feature flag protection.

The crisis began when a policy change containing unintended blank fields was inserted into regional Spanner tables that Service Control relies on for policy data. Due to the global nature of quota management, this corrupted metadata replicated worldwide within seconds. 

When Service Control attempted to process these blank fields, it triggered the unprotected code path, causing a null pointer exception that sent the binaries into a crash loop across all regions simultaneously.

“The issue with this change was that it did not have appropriate error handling nor was it feature flag protected. Without the appropriate error handling, the null pointer caused the binary to crash,” Google explained in its incident report. 

The company’s Site Reliability Engineering team identified the root cause within 10 minutes and deployed a “red-button” kill switch within 40 minutes to disable the problematic serving path.

While most regions recovered within two hours, the us-central1 region experienced prolonged difficulties. 

As Service Control tasks restarted in this major region, they created a “herd effect” on the underlying Spanner infrastructure, overwhelming the database with simultaneous requests.

Google engineers discovered that Service Control lacked proper randomized exponential backoff mechanisms to prevent this cascading failure. The company had to throttle task creation and route traffic to multi-regional databases to reduce the load on the overloaded infrastructure. 

This extended recovery process affected critical services including Google Compute Engine, BigQuery, Cloud Storage, and numerous other products that form the backbone of many enterprises’ digital operations.

Mitigations

In response to the widespread disruption, Google has outlined extensive remediation measures to prevent similar incidents. 

The company immediately froze all changes to the Service Control stack and manual policy pushes pending complete system remediation.

Key improvements include modularizing Service Control’s architecture to fail open rather than closed, ensuring that API requests can still be served even when individual checks fail. 

Google also committed to auditing all systems consuming globally replicated data and enforcing feature flag protection for all critical binary changes.

The incident affected over 60 Google Cloud and Workspace products, including Gmail, Google Drive, Google Meet, App Engine, Cloud Functions, and Vertex AI services. 

Google emphasized that existing streaming and Infrastructure-as-a-Service resources remained operational, though customers experienced intermittent API and user interface access issues throughout the duration of the outage.

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