Sandboxed production clones¶
What?¶
A sandboxed production clone is an isolated, near-identical copy of a live production environment, used for:
Safe testing of patches, updates, and security configurations
Malware analysis without risking real systems
Threat hunting using realistic traffic and logs
Developer testing without breaking production
Unlike traditional staging environments, these clones:
Mirror real data (anonymised if needed)
Run in strict isolation (network segmentation, no outbound internet)
Can be reset on-demand (snapshot-based)
How to build a sandboxed clone¶
Data extraction & sanitisation¶
Methods:
Database dumps (MySQL, PostgreSQL) with PII scrubbing
Virtual machine snapshots (VMware, Hyper-V, AWS AMIs)
Containerised clones (Docker/Kubernetes with volume mounts)
Sanitisation Tools:
Anonymisation:
faker
(Python),pg_anonymizer
(PostgreSQL)Subset sampling:
jq
(JSON),csvkit
(CSV)
# Example: Create a sanitised MySQL dump
mysqldump --single-transaction production_db | \
sed 's/real_email@domain.com/test_user@example.org/g' > sanitised_db.sql
Environment isolation¶
Network Controls:
No internet access (iptables/nftables block outbound traffic)
Private VLANs (separate from production)
Host-based firewalls (allow only required ports)
Access Restrictions:
Separate credentials (no production keys/secrets)
Time-limited sessions (auto-expire after 4 hours)
Automated deployment¶
Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) Options:
Tool |
Use Case |
Example Command |
---|---|---|
Terraform |
Cloud VM/network provisioning |
|
Ansible |
Configuration management |
|
Vagrant |
Local VM cloning |
|
Example AWS Clone Setup:
# Create a sandboxed VPC
aws ec2 create-vpc --cidr-block 10.0.0.0/16 --tag-specifications 'ResourceType=vpc,Tags=[{Key=Name,Value=sandbox-clone}]'
# Restrict outbound traffic
aws ec2 create-security-group --group-name "sandbox-no-internet" --description "Block all egress" --vpc-id vpc-123
aws ec2 revoke-security-group-egress --group-id sg-123 --ip-permissions '[{IpProtocol="-1", FromPort=-1, ToPort=-1, IpRanges=[{CidrIp="0.0.0.0/0"}]}]'
Tooling recommendations¶
Category |
Open-Source |
Enterprise |
---|---|---|
Virtualisation |
KVM, VirtualBox |
VMware vSphere, Nutanix |
Containers |
Docker, Podman |
Red Hat OpenShift |
Orchestration |
Terraform, Ansible |
HashiCorp Stack, AWS Control Tower |
Monitoring |
ELK Stack, Grafana |
Splunk, Datadog |
Implementation checklist¶
Define data scope (full clone vs. subset)
Implement network isolation (VLANs/firewalls)
Automate deployment (IaC templates)
Schedule regular resets (e.g., weekly snapshots)
Audit access (who can spin up/down clones)
Example Reset Policy:
All sandbox clones must:
1. Be destroyed after 7 days unless exempted
2. Log all user activity (ssh, database queries)
3. Block outbound internet by default
Why this works¶
Reduces production risks from untested changes
Improves threat detection with realistic data
Cost-effective (cloud instances can be paused when unused)