AWS Cloud Security and Compliance

AWS Cloud Security That Covers Every Layer

Cloud adoption is accelerating, but so are cloud-based threats. Misconfigured resources, overprivileged IAM roles, unencrypted data stores, and unmonitored workloads are now the primary entry points for attackers. According to industry research, misconfiguration is the leading cause of cloud security breaches — and it is entirely preventable.

Without the right guardrails, your cloud becomes your weakest link. At FactualMinds, we help organizations protect their AWS environments, meet compliance mandates, and accelerate innovation using AWS-native tools, third-party platforms, and proprietary methods that go beyond standard approaches. As an AWS Select Tier Consulting Partner, our security assessments are backed by deep operational experience across hundreds of AWS deployments.

The AWS Shared Responsibility Model

Understanding security in AWS starts with the shared responsibility model. AWS secures the infrastructure — the physical data centers, hypervisors, networking, and managed services. You are responsible for securing everything you build on top: your data, identity and access management, network configuration, encryption, and application-level controls.

This distinction is critical. When organizations assume AWS handles all security, they leave dangerous gaps. Our role is to ensure that your side of the shared responsibility model is fully covered.

What AWS Secures

• Physical data center security and environmental controls
• Hypervisor and host operating system patching
• Network infrastructure and DDoS protection at the infrastructure layer
• Managed service security (RDS engine patching, S3 durability, etc.)

What You Are Responsible For

• IAM policies, roles, and user access management
• Network configuration (Security Groups, NACLs, VPC design)
• Data encryption at rest and in transit
• Operating system and application patching on EC2 instances
• Application-level security (input validation, authentication, authorization)
• Logging, monitoring, and incident response

Common AWS Security Gaps We Find

After conducting hundreds of security assessments, we consistently find the same categories of vulnerabilities across organizations of all sizes.

Overprivileged IAM Roles and Policies

The most common finding in every assessment. Teams grant AdministratorAccess or PowerUserAccess to service roles, Lambda functions, and developer accounts because scoping permissions takes time. Over months, these broad permissions accumulate and create a massive blast radius in the event of a credential compromise.

We implement least-privilege IAM using AWS IAM Access Analyzer, permission boundaries, and service control policies to ensure every identity has only the access it needs.

Unencrypted Data at Rest

S3 buckets, EBS volumes, RDS databases, and DynamoDB tables without encryption at rest are a compliance failure and a data breach risk. We audit every data store and implement default encryption using AWS KMS with customer-managed keys where compliance requires it.

Missing or Incomplete Logging

CloudTrail is enabled by default, but many organizations have not configured organization-wide trails, S3 access logging, VPC Flow Logs, or DNS query logging. Without comprehensive logging, you cannot detect or investigate security incidents after the fact.

Public Exposure

S3 buckets with public access, EC2 instances with overly permissive Security Groups, RDS instances accessible from the internet — these misconfigurations are the most commonly exploited attack vectors in cloud environments. We scan for and remediate all public exposure risks.

No Centralized Security Monitoring

Many organizations deploy individual AWS services without connecting them to a centralized security view. GuardDuty findings go unreviewed, Config rules trigger without alerting, and Security Hub aggregates findings nobody reads. We build operational security workflows that turn alerts into action.

Our AWS Security Assessment Process

Phase 1: Discovery and Scoping (Days 1-3)

We begin by understanding your environment scope, compliance requirements, and risk priorities:

• Account structure — Single account, multi-account with Organizations, or Control Tower managed
• Compliance requirements — SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27001, GDPR, or internal policies
• Architecture overview — VPC topology, data flows, external integrations, and third-party services
• Existing security tooling — Current GuardDuty, Config, Security Hub, and third-party tool deployments

Phase 2: Automated Assessment (Days 3-7)

Using a combination of AWS-native tools and our proprietary scanners, we evaluate:

• IAM analysis — Access Analyzer findings, unused permissions, cross-account roles, MFA enforcement, root account activity
• Network assessment — Security Group rules, NACL configurations, VPC design, VPC peering, VPN and Direct Connect security, public subnet exposure
• Data protection — Encryption status across S3, EBS, RDS, DynamoDB, SQS, SNS, and Kinesis; KMS key policies and rotation
• Logging and monitoring — CloudTrail coverage, VPC Flow Logs, S3 access logs, CloudWatch alarms, and GuardDuty configuration
• Compliance mapping — Automated checks against SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA, or CIS Benchmarks using AWS Config conformance packs and Security Hub standards

Phase 3: Manual Review (Days 7-10)

Automated tools catch configuration issues but miss architectural and logic-level vulnerabilities. Our engineers manually review:

• Application architecture — Data flow between services, authentication patterns, API security, and secrets management
• Container security — ECR image scanning, ECS task role permissions, Kubernetes RBAC for EKS
• Serverless security — Lambda function permissions, API Gateway authorization, event source mappings
• Backup and disaster recovery — Backup policies, cross-region replication, and recovery testing

Phase 4: Findings Report and Remediation Plan (Days 10-14)

You receive a comprehensive report with:

• Executive summary — Overall security posture score and risk level
• Prioritized findings — Each finding categorized as Critical, High, Medium, or Low with specific remediation steps
• Compliance gaps — Mapped to your target compliance framework(s)
• Quick wins — Issues that can be resolved in under a day with minimal risk
• Architectural recommendations — Longer-term improvements to your security architecture

Compliance Framework Matrix

We map AWS security controls to the compliance frameworks our clients most commonly target:

For a deeper dive into security strategies beyond compliance checkbox exercises, read our guide on Securing AWS Workloads: Beyond the Basics.

AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) Deployment

AWS WAF is a critical layer of defense for any application exposed to the internet. We design and deploy WAF configurations that block malicious traffic while allowing legitimate users through seamlessly.

Our WAF Approach

• Managed rule groups — AWS Managed Rules for common threats (OWASP Top 10, known bad inputs, bot control)
• Custom rules — Rate-based rules for DDoS mitigation, geo-restriction for compliance, and application-specific patterns
• Bot control — AWS WAF Bot Control to distinguish legitimate bots (search engines, monitoring) from malicious ones (scrapers, credential stuffers)
• Logging and tuning — WAF logging to S3 and CloudWatch for continuous rule refinement and false positive reduction

Proven WAF Results

Our AWS WAF deployments have delivered measurable results across industries:

• DDoS Mitigation for BI Platforms — Implemented WAF with Shield Advanced to block 100% of DDoS traffic for a high-traffic analytics platform, eliminating downtime and improving query performance by 15%. Read the full case study →

• PCI Compliance for eCommerce — Deployed WAF to achieve 100% PCI DSS compliance audit pass rates while blocking 97.5% of malicious requests and reducing checkout abandonment by 8%. Read the full case study →

• eLearning Application Security — Protected eLearning applications against SQL injection, XSS, bots, and DDoS attacks, blocking 99.2% of malicious requests and reducing security incidents to near zero. Read the full case study →

Multi-Account Security Architecture

For organizations running multiple AWS accounts — which is the recommended approach for isolation and blast radius reduction — we design and implement enterprise-grade security architectures.

AWS Organizations and Control Tower

We set up AWS Organizations with a well-designed OU (Organizational Unit) structure that separates production, development, staging, sandbox, and shared services accounts. Service Control Policies (SCPs) enforce guardrails across the entire organization, preventing actions like disabling CloudTrail, deleting VPC Flow Logs, or launching resources in unauthorized regions.

Centralized Security Services

• Delegated Security Hub — Aggregate security findings from all accounts into a central security account
• Organization-wide GuardDuty — Threat detection across every account with centralized findings
• CloudTrail Organization Trail — Every API call across every account logged to a tamper-proof S3 bucket in the log archive account
• AWS Config Aggregator — Compliance visibility across all accounts from a single dashboard

Cross-Account Access Patterns

We implement secure cross-account access using IAM roles with external IDs, session policies, and permission boundaries — eliminating the need for long-lived access keys that can be compromised.

Security for Specific AWS Services

Amazon RDS and Database Security

Database security goes beyond encryption. We implement RDS security best practices including:

• VPC placement with no public accessibility
• IAM database authentication where supported
• SSL/TLS enforcement for connections
• Automated snapshot encryption
• Audit logging with CloudWatch Logs

Container and Serverless Security

For organizations running containerized or serverless workloads through DevOps pipelines:

• ECR image scanning with Amazon Inspector
• ECS task role scoping with least-privilege policies
• EKS Pod Security Standards and RBAC configuration
• Lambda function permission boundaries
• API Gateway authorization with Cognito or custom authorizers

AI and ML Workload Security

For organizations leveraging AWS Bedrock and other AI services:

• Model access policies and guardrails
• Data privacy controls for training data
• VPC endpoints for private API access to Bedrock
• Audit logging of all model invocations

Continuous Security Monitoring

Security assessments capture a point-in-time snapshot, but threats and configurations change daily. We implement continuous security monitoring that catches issues as they emerge.

Automated Detection and Response

Using AWS EventBridge, Lambda, and Step Functions, we build automated response workflows:

• GuardDuty finding → Slack/PagerDuty alert — Immediate notification for high-severity threats
• Public S3 bucket detected → Auto-remediate — Automatically remove public access on non-whitelisted buckets
• Root account login → Immediate alert — Any root account activity triggers an urgent notification
• Unauthorized region usage → Auto-terminate — Resources launched in unauthorized regions are automatically terminated

Security Dashboards

We build CloudWatch dashboards and Security Hub custom insights that give your security team — or our team, if you engage us for ongoing monitoring — real-time visibility into:

• Open security findings by severity
• Compliance posture across frameworks
• GuardDuty threat trends
• IAM access key age and rotation status
• Encryption coverage gaps

Getting Started with AWS Security

Every security engagement begins with understanding your current posture, compliance requirements, and risk tolerance. Whether you need a one-time assessment, compliance readiness preparation, or ongoing security monitoring, our team of AWS security specialists is ready to help.

Contact us to schedule your AWS security assessment →