ikingStrike
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Quick Start

Get your first cloud account connected and scanned in under 10 minutes.

This guide walks you through setting up VikingCloud from scratch. By the end, you will have your first cloud account connected and your first scan running.

Step 1: Create Your Account

  1. Go to vikingcloud.com and click Get Started
  2. Enter your email address and create a password
  3. Verify your email by clicking the confirmation link

Step 2: Create Your Team

After signing in, you will be prompted to create a team:

  1. Enter your organization name (e.g., "Acme Corp")
  2. This creates your team workspace where cloud accounts and scan results live
  3. You can invite team members later from the Members settings page

Step 3: Connect Your First Cloud Account

Navigate to Settings > Connections in your team dashboard.

Click Add Connection and select your cloud provider:

  • AWS — Requires an IAM user with read-only permissions and an access key pair
  • GCP — Requires a service account with Viewer role and a JSON key file
  • Azure — Requires a service principal with Reader role
  • Kubernetes — Requires a service account token with read-only cluster access

For detailed setup instructions with both console (GUI) and CLI methods, see the Connecting Accounts section.

Step 4: Run Your First Scan

After connecting a cloud account:

  1. VikingCloud automatically starts discovering your resources
  2. Resource inventory appears in the Inventory page within minutes
  3. Security checks run automatically after discovery completes
  4. Findings appear in the Findings page, categorized by severity
  5. Vulnerability scans for container images and VMs begin in parallel

Step 5: Review Your Dashboard

Go to the Overview page to see:

  • Total resources discovered across all connected accounts
  • Security findings grouped by priority
  • Vulnerability counts by severity
  • Compliance posture summary

What Happens During a Scan

VikingCloud performs the following during each scan cycle:

  1. Resource Discovery — Enumerates all resources in your cloud account using API-level access
  2. Security Analysis — Runs hundreds of built-in security checks against discovered resource configurations
  3. Container Scanning — Pulls container images from your registries (ECR, GCR, ACR) and scans for known CVEs
  4. VM Scanning — Creates temporary snapshots of VM disks, mounts them on ephemeral scanner instances, scans for vulnerabilities, and cleans up all temporary resources
  5. Enrichment — Cross-references findings with known exploit databases for prioritization

Next Steps

  • Review your Findings to understand your security posture
  • Connect additional cloud accounts to get unified visibility
  • Explore compliance frameworks in the Compliance section