AWS Security Consulting
Misconfiguration — not sophisticated exploits — is behind most AWS breaches. An overprivileged IAM role, a public S3 bucket, a GuardDuty alert nobody reviewed. We find these gaps in 2 weeks, remediate in 4–6 weeks, and leave you with monitoring that catches the next one before it becomes a headline.
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AWS security consulting from an AWS Select Tier Partner. 2-week assessment, 4–6 week remediation, zero disruption. IAM hardening, public exposure, compliance gaps, and continuous monitoring.
Our initial security assessment typically takes 2 weeks. During this time, we analyze your IAM configurations, network architecture, encryption practices, logging and monitoring setup, and compliance posture. You receive a prioritized findings report with clear remediation steps. Critical vulnerabilities are flagged within the first 48 hours.
We help organizations achieve and maintain compliance with SOC 2 Type I and Type II, PCI DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, GDPR, and CCPA. Our approach maps AWS security controls directly to framework requirements so you can demonstrate compliance to auditors with confidence.
GuardDuty is a threat detection service that monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior using machine learning, and as of 2026 its Extended Threat Detection capability correlates runtime activity, malware findings, VPC Flow Logs, DNS queries, and CloudTrail events into multi-stage attack sequences across EC2 and ECS at no additional cost. The redesigned AWS Security Hub (GA from re:Inforce 2025) provides near real-time exposure dashboards that fuse GuardDuty threats, Inspector vulnerabilities, and Security Hub CSPM misconfigurations into a single prioritized view with up to one year of trend history — and since 14 July 2026 includes AI inventory (Essentials, no extra cost) that catalogs managed AI via Config, self-hosted AI via Inspector SBOM, and external model APIs via GuardDuty DNS. AWS Config records and evaluates resource configurations against compliance rules and supplies the managed-AI configuration items that AI inventory consumes. We deploy all three together for comprehensive coverage and also stream Security Hub CSPM findings into CloudWatch (supported since March 2026) for shared observability.
Yes. We design and implement multi-account security architectures using AWS Organizations, Control Tower, and Service Control Policies. This includes centralized logging with CloudTrail and Security Hub delegation, cross-account IAM roles, and consistent security baselines applied through organizational units.
We set up the infrastructure for continuous monitoring — GuardDuty, Security Hub, CloudWatch alarms, and automated incident response with Lambda and EventBridge. For organizations that need 24/7 human-led monitoring, we can integrate with managed SOC providers or help you build an internal security operations capability.
We help organizations build incident response runbooks using AWS Systems Manager Automation, Step Functions, and Lambda. For active incidents, we provide rapid response services to contain threats, assess blast radius, remediate vulnerabilities, and conduct post-incident reviews to prevent recurrence.
AWS cloud security is the practice of protecting workloads, data, and identities running on Amazon Web Services through a layered defense across IAM, network, data, and application controls. It combines AWS-native services — IAM, GuardDuty, Security Hub, Macie, KMS, WAF, Shield — with continuous configuration management, threat detection, and compliance monitoring under the AWS Shared Responsibility Model.
See how we’ve secured critical workloads and achieved compliance across different industries:
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.
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.
For a deeper walkthrough of the line — where customer vs. AWS obligations sit in practice — see the AWS Security & Compliance hub and the shared responsibility breakdown.
Every engagement we run delivers each of the seven Security Pillar design principles as a measurable outcome. Auditors recognise the Pillar; insurers price against it; your incident-response runbooks should reference it.
| Design principle | What we deliver | Primary AWS services |
|---|---|---|
| Strong identity foundation | IAM Identity Center workforce SSO, least-privilege roles, ABAC, Access Analyzer remediation | IAM Identity Center, IAM, Access Analyzer, Cognito |
| Maintain traceability | Multi-region CloudTrail with log file validation, immutable archive in dedicated account, OCSF normalisation | CloudTrail, CloudTrail Lake, Security Lake |
| Apply security at all layers | Edge to data: WAF + Shield, Network Firewall, Inspector v2, GuardDuty, KMS, Macie | WAF, Shield, Network Firewall, Inspector, GuardDuty, KMS |
| Automate security best practices | Config conformance packs, Security Hub Essentials, IaC guardrails, EventBridge auto-remediation | Config, Security Hub, EventBridge, Step Functions |
| Protect data in transit and at rest | TLS 1.3 (ML-KEM hybrid where supported), KMS-CMK everywhere regulated, key rotation as policy | KMS, ACM, ACM Private CA, S3 Bucket Keys |
| Keep people away from data | Read-only by default, MFA-gated break-glass, Athena/Lake Formation query-based access | IAM Identity Center, Lake Formation, Athena |
| Prepare for security events | Documented runbooks, tabletop exercises, pre-staged forensic tooling | Detective, Incident Manager, Access Analyzer |
Run a free Well-Architected Assessment to see which design principles your environment already satisfies and which need work.
After conducting hundreds of security assessments, we consistently find the same categories of vulnerabilities across organizations of all sizes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We begin by understanding your environment scope, compliance requirements, and risk priorities:
Using a combination of AWS-native tools and our proprietary scanners, we evaluate:
Automated tools catch configuration issues but miss architectural and logic-level vulnerabilities. Our engineers manually review:
You receive a comprehensive report with:
We map AWS security controls to the compliance frameworks our clients most commonly target:
| Security Control | SOC 2 | PCI DSS | HIPAA | ISO 27001 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IAM & Access Control | CC6.1-6.3 | Req 7-8 | §164.312(a) | A.9 |
| Encryption at Rest | CC6.1, CC6.7 | Req 3 | §164.312(a)(2)(iv) | A.10 |
| Encryption in Transit | CC6.1, CC6.7 | Req 4 | §164.312(e)(1) | A.10 |
| Logging & Monitoring | CC7.1-7.3 | Req 10 | §164.312(b) | A.12 |
| Network Security | CC6.6 | Req 1-2 | §164.312(e)(1) | A.13 |
| Incident Response | CC7.4-7.5 | Req 12.10 | §164.308(a)(6) | A.16 |
| Vulnerability Management | CC7.1 | Req 6, 11 | §164.308(a)(1) | A.12 |
| Data Backup & Recovery | CC9.1 | Req 9 | §164.308(a)(7) | A.17 |
For a deeper dive into security strategies beyond compliance checkbox exercises, read our guide on Securing AWS Workloads: Beyond the Basics.
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 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 →
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.
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.
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.
Database security goes beyond encryption. We implement RDS security best practices including:
For organizations running containerized or serverless workloads through DevOps pipelines:
For organizations leveraging AWS Bedrock and other AI services:
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.
Using AWS EventBridge, Lambda, and Step Functions, we build automated response workflows:
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:
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.
For organizations that need unified coverage across HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and ISO 27001, our dedicated Cloud Compliance Services page covers each framework in detail. For a free architecture-level health check across all six pillars — including security — see our AWS Well-Architected Review.
We scan every layer — IAM trust policies, S3 bucket permissions, EC2 security groups, RDS accessibility, and Lambda execution roles. Critical findings are flagged within 48 hours. You receive a prioritized report with specific remediation steps, not a list of raw CVEs.
Overprivileged IAM roles and open security group rules are the two most common entry points we find. We audit your entire identity and network configuration, map the blast radius of each gap, and deliver a remediation plan ordered by risk — not alphabetically.
We map every AWS security control directly to your target framework — SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA, or ISO 27001. New engagements deploy Config conformance packs org-wide with safe auto-remediation on reversible controls (see our continuous compliance guide). Evidence accrues via conformance-pack exports and Security Hub control status — Audit Manager only if you onboarded before it closed to new customers in April 2026.
GuardDuty (with Extended Threat Detection AI/ML attack-sequence findings for EC2 and ECS), Security Hub with near real-time exposure dashboards plus AI inventory (Jul 2026 — org-wide Bedrock/AgentCore/SageMaker, self-hosted stacks via Inspector SBOM, and external model APIs via GuardDuty DNS), a Security coverage widget for accounts missing detection services, and Config drift alerts — wired into automated response so monitoring is operational, not decorative. Public S3 buckets auto-remediated, root account activity paged in real time.
Validated by AWS for security consulting delivery — not a generalist firm that added a security practice. Our engineers hold AWS security certifications and work exclusively in AWS environments.
Our security assessment takes 2 weeks. Remediation for most findings completes in 4–6 weeks. You get a date-bound engagement, not an open-ended retainer.
Many security engagements qualify for AWS Well-Architected funding or partner credits. We help you apply — reducing your out-of-pocket cost before we start.
Automated tools catch configuration errors and CVE exposure (Inspector, Security Hub). Manual review and AWS Security Agent full-repository code review catch architectural defects — trust boundaries, data flows, overly broad trust policies — that scanners miss. We do both.
Verticalized engagements aligned to industry threat models, compliance, and reference architectures.
We help fintech companies build cloud security architectures that meet PCI DSS, SOC 2, and regulatory requirements — protecting customer financial data without slowing down development.
We design HIPAA-compliant security architectures on AWS that protect patient health information while enabling the data sharing and interoperability that modern healthcare demands.
We secure retail and e-commerce platforms on AWS — reducing PCI DSS scope through tokenization, protecting customer data under CCPA, and defending against the DDoS and bot attacks that target checkout flows.
We build cloud security foundations for startups that satisfy enterprise customer security reviews, unlock SOC 2 Type II, and protect your AWS environment with the right level of security investment for your current stage.
We build AWS security architectures for educational institutions and EdTech platforms that protect student data under FERPA and COPPA, secure campus identity federation, and meet research data security requirements.
We build AWS security architectures for SaaS companies that pass enterprise customer security reviews, achieve SOC 2 Type II, and enforce tenant data isolation — because for SaaS, your security IS your product.
We design security architectures that protect operational technology (OT) networks while enabling the cloud connectivity that modern manufacturing demands — aligned to IEC 62443 and NIST CSF for industrial environments.
Implementation guides for this service from our team of AWS experts.
On June 15, 2026 AWS made Console Private Access work without internet — VPC endpoints route 100% of browser traffic. First-party benchmark: 161 interface endpoints and ~$263/mo for a 12-service 3-AZ pilot in us-east-1.
Attackers do not need to take down your service to hurt you — they can send traffic designed to maximize your AWS bill. DDoS amplification, Lambda invocation bombs, and SQS message flooding are billing attacks, not just availability attacks.
AWS Security Hub aggregates security findings from 200+ sources and, as of Jul 14 2026, includes AI inventory for org-wide AI assets. This guide covers setup, compliance standards, AI inventory, automated remediation, and a compliance dashboard without hiring a SOC team.
Security Hub detects control failures. It is not the compliance pipeline — and treating it as one is why teams still scramble for evidence at audit time. The four jobs are distinct: AWS Config detects drift, conformance packs deploy rules org-wide as immutable bundles, SSM Automation remediates the safe class, and evidence accrues via conformance-pack exports plus Security Hub control status (Audit Manager only if you onboarded before it closed to new customers on 30 April 2026). Here is the tool-per-job matrix, a conformance pack with auto-remediation, and the auto-remediation gotcha to design around.
Most KMS guides stop at "enable encryption." The architecture decision that actually bites is the key boundary: split one CMK into 3,200 per-tenant keys and you pay ~$3,200/mo in key storage alone while still sharing a single 10,000 req/s symmetric quota. Here is the decision matrix, the throttle math, and the encryption-context pattern that gives per-tenant isolation without per-tenant keys.
Service-by-service hardening for the AWS resources most often flagged by compliance scanners — DMS replication instances, OpenSearch encryption at rest, SageMaker network isolation, and Lambda runtime end-of-life management.
Two 2025 shifts rewrite the IR playbook: GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection now emits a single critical attack-sequence finding instead of a pile of high findings, and AWS Security Incident Response moved to metered pricing (free first 10,000 findings/month, then $0.000676 each) on November 21, 2025. The lesson is to page humans on the <1% of correlated criticals, isolate instead of terminate, and let auto-triage absorb the rest. Here are the runbooks.
On May 12, 2026 AWS announced full repository code review for AWS Security Agent—whole-codebase reasoning over trust boundaries and data flows plus file/line remediations, preview at no additional charge for existing Security Agent customers.
Production checklist for Prowler and AWS Security Hub — multi-account setup, scheduled scans, finding workflows, and remediation patterns on AWS.
Prowler finds AWS misconfigurations. This guide covers who remediates findings, IaC fix patterns, Security Hub workflows, and when to bring in AWS security consulting.
Copying curated Parquet into every consumer account is how data platforms drown in storage cost and permission sprawl. On Feb 11, 2026 AWS shipped Lake Formation cross-account version 5 — wildcard RAM shares for hundreds of thousands of tables. A composite 12-account platform cut duplicate curated copies from 3 to 0 and dropped cross-account access tickets from ~11/month to ~3 by standardizing LF-Tags + resource links.
Most remote-access RFPs still default to full Windows desktops — but 60%+ of contractor work is browser-only. WorkSpaces Secure Browser isolates SaaS in AWS; WorkSpaces Applications (formerly AppStream 2.0) streams fat clients without a desktop. A composite regulated services firm cut 3 legacy VDI vendors to 2 OU-scoped patterns and reduced unmanaged-endpoint incidents from ~9/quarter to ~2 after splitting browser vs app streaming.
Shield Advanced is $3,000/mo per org plus DTO fees — for a consumer marketplace (~180M req/mo CloudFront), cost protection credited $41k in scaling charges after a 38-minute L7 event when WAF rate rules were pre-configured.
For a card-acquiring fintech (~12M authorizations/mo), Payment Cryptography + PCI-scoped account cut HSM rack lease −$18k/mo — fraud review queue p95 2.4s → 380ms after EventBridge Pipes idempotency fix.
After the April 2026 S3 default that blocks SSE-C on new buckets (and on existing buckets in accounts with zero SSE-C objects), a SaaS media platform (~2.4 PB, 418 buckets) found 11 legacy upload paths still sending customer-key headers — all failing 403 until migrated to SSE-KMS.
After Cognito multi-Region replication (June 2026), a B2B API platform (~18k RPS peak) cut auth-related 5xx during a regional drill from 4.2% → 0.1% — but a missing WAF rate rule still let a scraper burn $1.8k in a weekend.
A 280-user SaaS ops team cut Client VPN connection-hours ~62% after moving 34 HTTPS apps to Verified Access — Site-to-Site on TGW stayed for the colo; full-tunnel Client VPN had been burning ~$1.1k/mo in idle connection fees.
Third-party tools we frequently wire into AWS as part of this engagement — production-tested integration guides for each.
Okta + AWS in 2026: Workforce Identity SSO into IAM Identity Center, Identity Threat Protection, ISPM, Device Access, passkeys, and Verified Access.
HashiCorp Vault on AWS: dynamic DB credentials, transit-engine encryption, HCP Vault Secrets, and EKS Secrets Operator vs AWS Secrets Manager guidance.
Architecture patterns, decision trees, and glossary terms that map to this engagement.
Identity-aware networking on AWS — VPC Lattice for service-to-service auth, IAM Roles Anywhere for non-AWS workloads, AWS Verified Access for human and device trust, Verified Permissions for fine-grained authz, PrivateLink for SaaS consumption. No implicit trust based on IP or VPC peering.
AWS Identity and Access Management — controls who can authenticate and what actions they are authorized to perform in your AWS account.
AWS Key Management Service — centralized key management for encrypting data across AWS services and applications.
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud — logically isolated network within AWS where you control IP addressing, subnets, routing, and access controls.
AWS audit logging service that records every API call and account activity across your AWS infrastructure for security, compliance, and operational investigation.
In-depth guides and best practices from our certified AWS architects.
After Cognito multi-Region replication (June 2026), a B2B API platform (~18k RPS peak) cut auth-related 5xx during a regional drill from 4.2% → 0.1% — but a missing WAF rate rule still let a scraper burn $1.8k in a weekend.
Read articleA 280-user SaaS ops team cut Client VPN connection-hours ~62% after moving 34 HTTPS apps to Verified Access — Site-to-Site on TGW stayed for the colo; full-tunnel Client VPN had been burning ~$1.1k/mo in idle connection fees.
Read articleAfter the April 2026 S3 default that blocks SSE-C on new buckets (and on existing buckets in accounts with zero SSE-C objects), a SaaS media platform (~2.4 PB, 418 buckets) found 11 legacy upload paths still sending customer-key headers — all failing 403 until migrated to SSE-KMS.
Read articleReal engagements where FactualMinds implemented this service for clients.
Implemented AWS WAF with Shield Advanced to block 100% of DDoS traffic for a high-traffic analytics platform, eliminating downtime and improving query performance.
Read case studyDeployed AWS WAF to safeguard eCommerce workloads, achieving 100% PCI DSS compliance audit pass rates while blocking 97.5% of malicious requests.
Read case studyIn-depth comparisons to help you choose the right approach before engaging.
GuardDuty vs Security Hub on AWS — they are complementary, not redundant. Threat detection feed vs aggregation hub, when each wins, and the cost model for both in 2026.
AWS WAF vs Network Firewall — they protect different layers and traffic shapes. WAF for HTTP(S), Network Firewall for VPC traffic. When each wins, and the multi-account pattern with Firewall Manager.
AWS IAM Identity Center vs Amazon Cognito — workforce SSO vs customer-facing auth. They are not interchangeable. When to use each, federation patterns, and the multi-tenant SaaS architecture.
Compare Prowler and Checkov on AWS — runtime audits vs IaC scanning — and who closes the implementation gap when findings pile up.
SOC 2 on AWS — how Prowler, Security Hub, and AWS security consulting fit together. Tools detect; implementation delivers auditor-ready evidence.
Our security engineers identify misconfigured IAM, open endpoints, and compliance gaps — then give you a prioritized remediation roadmap. 2-week assessment. Zero disruption to running workloads.
