How We Improved Cloud Security Posture by 72% with a Comprehensive AWS Assessment

Challenges: Vulnerabilities undermining cloud reliability

As the client expanded into new markets, their AWS environment grew significantly, exposing multiple security and configuration gaps. Weak identity and access controls, including outdated keys, absent MFA, and poor password practices and policies, left accounts vulnerable to takeover. Data protection measures were fragile, with unencrypted RDS databases, unrotated secrets in AWS Secrets Manager, and limited backups. In addition, limited monitoring and missing network controls reduced visibility into suspicious activity. Together, these issues underscored the need for a structured assessment to restore security posture and strengthen overall resilience.

Solution: A comprehensive AWS assessment to secure workloads

zeb performed a holistic AWS security assessment using Prowler, an automated tool for validating security configurations. The assessment was designed around five key domains:

• Identity & Access Management: Strengthened account security by enforcing secure login practices, mandating MFA across all users, and systematically rotating outdated access keys to reduce the risk of unauthorized access.
• Network Security: Conducted a thorough review of firewall rules, routing configurations, and traffic flow controls to restrict exposure and ensure only trusted connections could reach critical workloads.
• Data Protection: Enhanced resilience of sensitive data by enforcing encryption standards, applying strict retention policies, and enabling automated backups to safeguard against accidental loss or malicious activity.
• Infrastructure Protection: Hardened compute and storage resources, including EC2 servers, RDS databases, and ECS containers, by patching outdated versions, addressing misconfigurations, and applying secure baselines for consistent protection.
• Threat Detection & Monitoring: Improved visibility into the environment by enabling GuardDuty, Security Hub, and CloudWatch anomaly detection, while configuring advanced alerts to quickly identify and respond to suspicious activity.
• Enhanced Visibility & Secrets Management: Activated VPC Flow Logs, implemented WAF, and rotated/managed credentials in AWS Secrets Manager.

These measures created a stronger, more resilient AWS environment ready to handle future threats.

Benefits: 61% Stronger data protection and 66% enhanced visibility

The AWS assessment delivered measurable improvements across security, monitoring, and data protection:

• 72% stronger security posture through hardened IAM policies, MFA adoption, access key rotation, and improved secrets management to reduce long-term credential exposure.
• 61% improved data protection through encryption, backup enforcement, restricted database access, and updated workloads across EC2 and Lambda to mitigate risks from outdated runtimes.
• 66% enhanced monitoring visibility with GuardDuty, Security Hub, and Flow Logs activated.

By addressing vulnerabilities and modernizing their security approach, the client achieved a more resilient AWS environment aligned with best practices.

Ready to strengthen your AWS environment?

Cloud security gaps put data at risk while disrupting operations, damaging trust, and stalling growth. An AWS security assessment provides the visibility and control needed to close vulnerabilities, modernize infrastructure, and safeguard business-critical workloads.

As an AWS Premier Tier Partner, we go beyond detection and deliver a clear roadmap to strengthen resilience and rebuild your infrastructure for better performance. Our expertise at zeb drives the design of intelligent, cloud-native solutions that simplify operations, enhance trust, and support long-term business growth. Leveraging deep AWS expertise, we turn contact centers into strategic assets that drive efficiency, resilience, and lasting customer loyalty.

Contact us today