Security & Compliance · AWS Select Tier Partner
AWS Security & Compliance, Built to Audit Standards
Misconfiguration — not sophisticated exploits — is behind most AWS breaches. We harden IAM, deploy native detection, and produce the evidence your auditors actually request — across HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI DSS 4.0.1, ISO 27001:2022, NIST CSF 2.0, GDPR, DORA, and the EU AI Act.
Last updated: April 2026 — currency review: Audit Manager closure, Security Hub Essentials pricing, Bedrock Automated Reasoning, KMS post-quantum, DORA, EU AI Act · Reviewed by: FactualMinds AWS-certified architects (Solutions Architect – Professional)
Browse by Subtopic
7 focused subtopic hubs, 39 production-grade guides
Each subtopic hub has its own URL, dedicated guides, and related services — built so you can link to the part of the cluster that matches your audit, threat model, or platform decision.
Compliance Frameworks
Framework-by-framework guidance — what auditors expect, what AWS provides, and what your team configures. (10 guides)
IAM & Access Control
Least-privilege patterns, workforce SSO with identity propagation, customer auth, and fine-grained Cedar-policy authorization. (4 guides)
Threat Detection & Response
Continuous monitoring, agentless vulnerability scanning, OCSF data lakes, forensic investigation, and automated remediation. (7 guides)
Data Security
Bucket-level controls, secret rotation, KMS post-quantum, Macie DSPM, and clean-room collaboration without raw-data sharing. (6 guides)
Network & Application Security
Layer-7 defenses, ZTNA for workforce apps, stateful L3-L7 firewalling, and production-grade VPC patterns. (5 guides)
Governance & Multi-Account
Multi-account is where compliance scope is either won or quietly lost. Control Tower, landing-zone topology, automated conformance packs, and drift detection — the patterns that hold scope at 50+ accounts. (8 guides)
AI Security
AI-specific risk: prompt injection, PII leakage, hallucinations, and compliant model deployment for regulated industries. (4 guides)
Compliance Frameworks
Dedicated landing pages for the four frameworks buyers ask about most
Control-by-control AWS implementation, evidence pipeline, and engagement timeline — one page per framework.
HIPAA on AWS
PHI architecture, BAA boundaries, HIPAA-eligible services, §164.312 technical safeguards, and audit-ready evidence — for healthcare platforms, telehealth, and digital-health startups.
SOC 2 Type II on AWS
CC1–CC9 trust services criteria mapped to AWS-native controls, evidence pipeline, and a CPA-firm-ready audit package — for SaaS founders facing enterprise procurement.
PCI DSS 4.0.1 on AWS
CDE scope reduction, tokenisation, network segmentation, WAF Req 6.4.3 script integrity, QSA-ready evidence — for fintechs, payment processors, and card-handling SaaS.
ISO 27001:2022 on AWS
Annex A.5–A.8 implementation, ISMS scoping, climate-change context (Amendment 1:2024), notified-body audit prep — for SaaS expanding to EU/APAC and regulated B2B vendors.
AWS Well-Architected — Security Pillar
Aligned to all seven Security Pillar design principles
Our engagements deliver each principle as a measurable outcome — not a slide deck.
The AWS Well-Architected Framework defines six pillars; the Security Pillar is the one that decides whether your next audit becomes a sprint or a slog. Every engagement we run maps directly to its seven design principles.
Implement a strong identity foundation
Centralised identity (IAM Identity Center), least privilege, no long-lived keys, and ABAC at scale.
Maintain traceability
CloudTrail (multi-region, validated, immutable), CloudTrail Lake or Security Lake on OCSF 1.1, and tamper-evident log retention.
Apply security at all layers
Edge (WAF, Shield), network (Network Firewall, security groups), workload (Inspector, GuardDuty), and data (KMS, Macie).
Automate security best practices
AWS Config conformance packs, Security Hub Essentials, IaC guardrails, and auto-remediation for high-confidence findings.
Protect data in transit and at rest
TLS 1.3 (ML-KEM hybrid where supported), KMS-CMK encryption for everything regulated, and key rotation as policy.
Keep people away from data
Read-only access by default, break-glass with MFA, query-based access (Athena, Lake Formation) over direct console access.
Prepare for security events
Documented runbooks, tabletop exercises, and pre-staged forensic tooling (Detective, IAM Access Analyzer, EventBridge response automations).
Featured Guides
One marquee guide per subtopic
The guides our clients most often cite when asked "send me one link to ground the conversation."
HIPAA on AWS: The Compliance Lead's Audit-Ready Checklist
An audit-prep checklist for Compliance Leads, Security Officers, and CISOs — BAA execution, documented Security Risk Assessments, workforce training, audit cadence, and the evidence packages OCR investigators expect when they show up.
AWS IAM Best Practices: Least Privilege Access Control
Least privilege is a slogan. Working IAM at production scale is a different problem. Roles vs users, permission boundaries, SCPs, identity federation, and the access-control patterns that keep teams fast without leaving keys lying around.
AWS GuardDuty Threat Detection: A Production Setup Guide
How to deploy, tune, and operationalize Amazon GuardDuty for production threat detection — covering finding types, multi-account setup, automated response, and reducing false positives.
AWS S3 Security Best Practices: Preventing Data Exposure
S3 misconfigurations are still the leading cause of headline data breaches. Bucket policies, encryption, access logging, Block Public Access, and the practices that keep "developer left the bucket public" from being your incident.
AWS WAF: Web Application Firewall Configuration for Production
AWS WAF blocks attacks. It also blocks legitimate users when the rules are wrong — and that's a worse incident. Managed rule groups, custom rules, rate limiting, bot control, and the layered defense strategy that protects without flooding your support queue.
How to Set Up Amazon Bedrock Guardrails for Production
Amazon Bedrock Guardrails protect foundation models from harmful outputs — filtering on prompt injection, jailbreaks, toxicity, and PII. This guide covers setup, testing, cost optimization, and production safety patterns for GenAI applications.
Free Tools & Tag Archives
Self-serve assessments and broader content
Run a quick gap check, or browse the full security/compliance archive beyond this curated hub.
HIPAA Compliance Checker
15 questions across PHI controls, access management, audit logging, and encryption. Get a gap report before your auditor does.
Well-Architected Assessment
20 questions across the 6 AWS pillars including Security. Identify hidden risks across IAM, data protection, and incident response.
Shared Responsibility Quiz
10 real-world AWS scenarios. Find out — fast — which side of the line each control sits on, and where most teams quietly drop the ball.
More Security Articles
Beyond the curated guides above — browse all posts tagged with security or compliance for long-tail topics.
Security Services
Engagements that put these guides into practice
Our writing reflects what we ship. When you're ready to apply this in your environment, we run the engagement end-to-end.
AWS Cloud Security
Vulnerability assessment, network review, IAM hardening, and continuous monitoring across your AWS environment.
Cloud Compliance Services
HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, and GDPR readiness — gap assessment, control implementation, and audit evidence.
Managed SOC & MDR
24/7 managed detection and response on AWS-native tooling — GuardDuty, Security Hub, Security Lake, and automated containment runbooks.
AWS Penetration Testing
AWS-aware pen testing — IAM privilege escalation, S3 misconfiguration, IMDS exploitation, web app, API, and container testing.
Cyber-Led AI
AI-specific security readiness — IAM hardening for ML, SageMaker security, prompt-injection defense, and model governance.
How we engage
Date-bound engagement, not an open-ended retainer
Discovery is read-only — we never push remediation in week one. Assessment outputs a prioritised findings register tied to exploitability and audit impact. Remediation is IaC-driven, reviewed change-by-change, and reversible. After go-live, the evidence pipeline runs continuously without our team in the loop.
Week 1 — Discovery
Read-only IAM Access Analyzer, Security Hub baseline scan, Config conformance pack deployment. We learn your environment before we propose anything.
Weeks 2–3 — Assessment
Findings prioritised by exploitability and audit impact. Threat model, IAM blast-radius map, network segmentation review, evidence-pipeline gap analysis.
Weeks 4–8 — Remediation
IaC-driven hardening, WAF/Network Firewall rollout, encryption uplift, multi-account guardrails. Every change reviewed and reversible.
Ongoing — Evidence Pipeline
Continuous Security Hub + Config + Inspector v2 evidence flowing into your GRC tool (Vanta / Drata / Secureframe) on the cadence your auditor expects.
Case Studies
Production-grade outcomes
Real engagements with measurable security and compliance results.
PCI DSS Fintech Migration in 12 Weeks
Payment processor moved to AWS with CDE scope reduced 70%, audit prep cut from 8 weeks to 4 days, and 12K+ malicious requests/day blocked via WAF.
HIPAA Telehealth Platform — Zero-Trust in 8 Weeks
Regional healthcare network deployed a HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform with 94% automated controls, 100% PHI encryption, and a 96/100 Security Hub score.
Outcomes we sign our name to
Numbers from the case studies above
Every figure here is in the linked case study, with the architecture and the assessor type named.
Weeks of QSA audit prep
Cut to days for a Level 1 fintech (PCI DSS).
CDE scope reduction
Cardholder Data Environment trimmed via tokenisation and segmentation.
Engagement to production
For a HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform on AWS.
Security Hub score
On the same telehealth platform at go-live.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about AWS security and compliance
The questions buyers actually ask before signing — multi-framework scope, evidence ownership, GRC tool integration, and ongoing cost.
We need HIPAA, SOC 2, and PCI DSS — can you handle multi-framework scope?
What is your AWS-native evidence pipeline now that Audit Manager is closed to new customers?
When do we need a 3PAO vs. CPA firm vs. notified body?
Do you provide the BAA, or just the AWS-side controls?
How do AI workloads (Bedrock, SageMaker) change the compliance scope?
What evidence packages do you produce, and who owns them post-engagement?
Can you integrate with our existing GRC tool (Vanta, Drata, Secureframe)?
What does ongoing compliance monitoring cost after the initial engagement?
Need Expert Help?
Our articles share what we know. Our consulting engagements apply that knowledge to your specific environment, regulatory scope, and threat model.