DigitalOcean security assessment
Simpler platform, same consequences. What we find here is usually exposure and secrets rather than deep IAM chains.
The context
What actually breaks on DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean estates are simpler than the hyperscalers and the findings reflect that. There is less permission chaining to unpick because the permission model is flatter, which means what we find is usually exposure or a credential rather than an elaborate escalation path.
That flatness cuts both ways. A personal access token in DigitalOcean is powerful and coarse: read-write tokens can act broadly across the account, and they are easy to create and easy to forget. We find them in CI variables, in deploy scripts, and occasionally in repositories.
The other consistent theme is cloud firewalls that were configured once and then diverged as droplets were added. Firewalls apply to tagged resources, and a droplet created without the tag is simply not covered. There is no warning when that happens.
Assessed surfaces
Everything we look at on DigitalOcean.
- 01Droplet firewall rules and management-port exposure
- 02Spaces bucket permissions, CDN configuration & public objects
- 03API token scope, lifetime and storage
- 04Managed database network restrictions, TLS enforcement & backups
- 05DOKS Kubernetes RBAC and cluster endpoint exposure
- 06App Platform environment variables and build-time secret handling
- 07Team access, SSH key inventory and offboarding
Questions
DigitalOcean FAQ
A read-only API token and, where teams are used, visibility of the team membership and roles. If you would rather not issue a token, we can work from an export produced by your own engineer using doctl.
Yes. Spaces bucket permissions and public object exposure, CDN configuration, and whether managed databases are restricted to trusted sources with TLS enforced. Publicly reachable managed databases are one of the more common serious findings on this platform.
Entirely. Auditors care that you have assessed and manage the provider as a supplier, not which provider you chose. We produce the supplier due diligence evidence alongside the technical assessment so both obligations are covered.
Other platforms we assess
A CI role assumable from an unrestricted GitHub OIDC condition, chaining into production admin.
AWS assessmentAn app registration holding a long-lived client secret with directory-wide Graph permissions.
Azure assessmentA downloadable service account key with project Editor, committed to a repo two years ago.
Google Cloud assessmentFind out what is reachable in your DigitalOcean estate.
Read-only access, one to two weeks, fixed price. You get attack paths with proof, not a posture score.
No sales sequence. A scoping call and a written proposal cost nothing.