Vigilare Engineering
Platform Team
The Vigilare platform team. We write about the AWS security, compliance, and cost signals behind account suspensions, and the practical steps to stay ahead of them.
61 articles
Vigilare + Terraform: Infrastructure-as-Code Setup Walkthrough
Deploy Vigilare's AWS integration with Terraform — a read-only IAM role, zero agents, full infrastructure-as-code. Here's the complete walkthrough with code samples and best practices.
May 29, 2026 · 6 min read
What Vigilare Monitors: A Plain-English Guide to Your Dashboard
Your Vigilare dashboard has a risk score, findings, billing charts, and security alerts. Here's a walkthrough of every section — what it shows, why it matters, and what to do when something changes.
May 22, 2026 · 5 min read
AWS Config vs Vigilare: Compliance Monitoring Compared
AWS Config is the backbone of compliance monitoring on AWS. Vigilare adds correlation, risk scoring, and account health context. Here's how they compare and when you need more than Config alone.
April 24, 2026 · 8 min read
Setting Up Slack Alerts in Vigilare: Never Miss a Critical Finding
Route Vigilare alerts to Slack so your team sees critical findings in real time. Here's the setup — from Slack app installation to alert routing rules — in under 5 minutes.
March 13, 2026 · 4 min read
AWS Security Findings Explained in Plain English
GuardDuty, Security Hub, and Config generate findings with names like 'Recon:EC2/PortProbeUnprotectedPort.' Here's what the most common findings actually mean, whether they're urgent, and what to do about each one.
February 6, 2026 · 9 min read
AWS Inspector: Continuous Vulnerability Management for EC2 and Containers
How to use Amazon Inspector v2 for continuous vulnerability assessment across EC2 instances, Lambda functions, and container images — with findings integration and remediation workflows.
February 5, 2026 · 9 min read
AWS Macie: Automating Data Classification and Sensitive Data Discovery
How to use Amazon Macie to automatically discover and classify sensitive data in S3, detect data security risks, and integrate findings into your security monitoring workflow.
February 4, 2026 · 8 min read
AWS Detective: Investigating Security Incidents with Graph Analytics
How to use AWS Detective to investigate GuardDuty findings, trace IAM credential activity, and build timelines of security incidents using its graph-based analysis engine.
February 3, 2026 · 9 min read
AWS S3 Bucket Policy Audit: Finding and Fixing Over-Permissive Access
A systematic approach to auditing S3 bucket policies across your AWS accounts — identifying public access, overly permissive conditions, and cross-account exposure that creates data breach risk.
February 1, 2026 · 9 min read
AWS Security Hub Automations: From Findings to Remediation
Use Security Hub automation rules, EventBridge, and Lambda to automatically triage findings, assign ownership, and trigger remediation workflows without manual intervention.
January 30, 2026 · 10 min read
Understanding Your Vigilare Risk Score: What the Number Means
Your Vigilare dashboard shows a risk score from 0 to 100. Here's exactly what goes into that number, what each range means, and the specific actions that improve it.
January 30, 2026 · 5 min read
AWS Access Key Rotation: Automating Credential Hygiene at Scale
A systematic approach to detecting old AWS IAM access keys, enforcing rotation policies, and automating the rotation process to reduce credential compromise risk.
January 29, 2026 · 9 min read
AWS Route 53 Security: Protecting Your DNS Infrastructure
Secure your DNS infrastructure with Route 53 health checks, DNSSEC, query logging, and monitoring to prevent DNS hijacking, subdomain takeover, and DNS-based attacks.
January 24, 2026 · 8 min read
AWS CloudFront Security: Protecting Your Content Delivery at the Edge
Configure CloudFront security headers, origin access control, signed URLs, geo-restriction, and monitoring to protect your content delivery infrastructure.
January 23, 2026 · 9 min read
AWS WAF Monitoring: Detecting and Responding to Web Application Attacks
How to configure AWS WAF logging, build detection rules for common attack patterns, and integrate WAF findings into your security monitoring workflow.
January 22, 2026 · 10 min read
AWS API Gateway Security: Monitoring, Throttling, and Access Control
A complete guide to securing AWS API Gateway — authentication, authorization, rate limiting, WAF integration, and monitoring for unauthorized API access.
January 21, 2026 · 11 min read
AWS Secrets Manager: Securing and Monitoring Your Application Secrets
How to use AWS Secrets Manager to eliminate hardcoded credentials, automate rotation, and monitor for unauthorized secret access across your AWS environment.
January 20, 2026 · 9 min read
AWS KMS Security: Key Management Monitoring and Best Practices
A practical guide to securing AWS Key Management Service — monitoring key usage, preventing unauthorized decryption, and detecting KMS misconfigurations before they cause data breaches.
January 19, 2026 · 10 min read
AWS ECS Security: Task Roles, Network Mode, and Container Hardening
ECS security centers on task IAM roles, network mode selection, and container-level policies. This guide covers the security configurations for Fargate and EC2 launch type tasks that protect containerized workloads.
January 12, 2026 · 8 min read
AWS EKS Security: Hardening Kubernetes Clusters on AWS
EKS security spans cluster configuration, pod-level controls, IAM integration, and network policies. This guide covers the essential security controls for production EKS workloads and the monitoring that detects container-layer threats.
January 11, 2026 · 10 min read
AWS DynamoDB Security: Access Control, Encryption, and Audit Logging
DynamoDB security requires careful IAM policy design, encryption configuration, and VPC endpoint setup. This guide covers the controls that protect DynamoDB data and the monitoring that detects unauthorized access.
January 10, 2026 · 8 min read
AWS RDS Security: Hardening Managed Databases Against Common Threats
RDS security encompasses network access, encryption, authentication, and audit logging. This guide covers the configurations that prevent unauthorized database access and the monitoring that detects suspicious activity.
January 8, 2026 · 9 min read
AWS Resource-Based Policies: Security Implications and Best Practices
Resource-based policies — S3 bucket policies, KMS key policies, SQS queue policies — directly grant access to resources without role assumption. Misconfigured resource policies are a common source of unauthorized access. This guide covers the security model and safe patterns.
January 6, 2026 · 8 min read
AWS Cross-Account Access: IAM Roles and Trust Policies at Scale
Cross-account access through IAM role assumption is foundational to multi-account AWS architectures. This guide covers trust policy design, security constraints for role assumption, and monitoring patterns that maintain visibility across account boundaries.
January 4, 2026 · 9 min read
AWS Cloud Forensics: Investigating Security Incidents in AWS Environments
Cloud forensics in AWS uses different tools and techniques than traditional endpoint forensics. This guide covers the evidence sources, investigation methodology, and preservation techniques for AWS security incidents.
December 30, 2025 · 10 min read
AWS Security Runbooks: Pre-Built Response Procedures for Common Findings
Security runbooks convert complex incident response decisions into step-by-step procedures. This guide provides runbook templates for the most common AWS security findings and explains how to maintain them as your environment evolves.
December 29, 2025 · 10 min read
CloudWatch vs Third-Party Monitoring: When to Upgrade
CloudWatch is free and built-in, but it has real limitations. Here's a framework for deciding when CloudWatch is enough and when it's time to invest in third-party monitoring — without overspending.
December 26, 2025 · 10 min read
AWS Serverless Monitoring: Observability for Lambda-Centric Architectures
Serverless architectures distribute execution across many short-lived function invocations, making traditional monitoring approaches insufficient. This guide covers the metrics, tracing, and alerting patterns that make Lambda-based systems observable.
December 25, 2025 · 8 min read
AWS Lambda Security: Function Hardening and Threat Detection
Lambda's serverless model creates unique security considerations. No servers to patch, but function code, permissions, and execution environment all require security attention. This guide covers Lambda security from permissions to runtime hardening.
December 23, 2025 · 9 min read
AWS Network ACLs: Subnet-Level Access Control for Defense in Depth
Network ACLs operate at the subnet level and provide a stateless firewall that complements security groups. Understanding when to use NACLs versus security groups, and how they interact, is essential for VPC security architecture.
December 22, 2025 · 7 min read
AWS Security Groups Best Practices: Writing Rules That Actually Work
Security groups are the primary network access control for EC2 and other services, but many environments accumulate rules that are overly broad, redundant, or provide weaker protection than intended. This guide covers the principles and practices that make security groups maintainable and secure.
December 21, 2025 · 8 min read
AWS VPC Flow Logs: Configuration, Storage, and Analysis
VPC Flow Logs are the primary data source for network security analysis in AWS. Getting the configuration right — format, destination, aggregation interval — determines both what you can detect and what you pay for storage.
December 20, 2025 · 8 min read
VPC Security Monitoring: Detecting Network Threats in AWS
VPC security monitoring combines flow logs, GuardDuty network findings, and DNS query logging to detect threats that bypass application-layer security. This guide covers the full network monitoring stack and what each layer catches.
December 19, 2025 · 9 min read
AWS Organizational Unit Structure: Designing for Scale and Security
Your OU structure determines how policies, billing, and governance apply across your AWS Organization. This guide covers the design patterns and tradeoffs for OUs that support both operational needs and security requirements.
December 18, 2025 · 8 min read
AWS Service Control Policies: Implementing Organization-Wide Guardrails
Service Control Policies are the strongest access control mechanism in AWS — they override IAM policies, apply to all principals including root, and can't be circumvented within an account. This guide covers SCP design, testing, and common guardrail patterns.
December 16, 2025 · 9 min read
AWS MSP Billing Visibility: Managing and Reporting Multi-Account Costs
Managing billing across dozens of client AWS accounts requires aggregation, allocation, and reporting that native AWS tools handle only partially. This guide covers the architecture for comprehensive MSP billing visibility.
December 14, 2025 · 8 min read
Monitoring Client AWS Accounts: Architecture and Alerting for MSPs
Client AWS monitoring requires centralized aggregation, per-client isolation, and alerting that's actionable at scale. This guide covers the architecture that makes it practical to monitor dozens of client accounts from a single operations center.
December 12, 2025 · 8 min read
Getting Started with Vigilare: From Zero to Protected in 5 Minutes
Connect your AWS account, deploy one Terraform module, and start getting real-time security and billing alerts. Here's the complete setup walkthrough.
December 12, 2025 · 5 min read
ISO 27001 on AWS: Building an Information Security Management System
ISO 27001 certification requires an Information Security Management System with documented controls and evidence of operation. This guide maps Annex A controls to AWS configurations and explains what auditors look for in cloud-hosted environments.
December 10, 2025 · 9 min read
PCI DSS Compliance on AWS: Protecting Cardholder Data in the Cloud
PCI DSS compliance for AWS workloads requires specific architectural controls around cardholder data environments. This guide covers the key requirements, network segmentation, and how to scope your CDE correctly to minimize compliance burden.
December 8, 2025 · 10 min read
AWS Spot Instances: Running Interruptible Workloads at 90% Discount
Spot Instances offer up to 90% savings compared to On-Demand pricing, but require workloads designed for interruption. This guide covers spot pricing mechanics, instance selection strategies, and architectures that work well with spot capacity.
December 4, 2025 · 8 min read
AWS Reserved Instances Guide: Maximizing Commitment Discounts
Reserved Instances deliver 30-60% discounts on EC2, RDS, and other services compared to On-Demand pricing. Getting the most from RIs requires understanding the purchase models, instance flexibility rules, and when to buy vs. when to use Savings Plans.
December 2, 2025 · 9 min read
AWS Lambda Concurrency Limits: Understanding and Managing Function Throttling
Lambda concurrency limits are easy to ignore until they cause cascading failures. This guide explains account-level vs. function-level concurrency, reserved vs. provisioned concurrency, and how to monitor and manage limits before they affect production.
November 29, 2025 · 8 min read
AWS Service Quotas Monitoring: Preventing Limit-Induced Outages
Service quota limits cause silent application failures and outages that look like bugs but are actually infrastructure ceilings. This guide covers how to monitor quota utilization across services, set up proactive alerts, and request increases before you hit limits in production.
November 27, 2025 · 8 min read
AWS SES DKIM and SPF Setup: Email Authentication That Protects Your Domain
DKIM and SPF are not optional — they're the authentication records that determine whether your SES-sent emails arrive in inboxes or spam folders. This guide covers correct setup, common mistakes, and DMARC for full domain protection.
November 26, 2025 · 7 min read
AWS SES Bounce Rate: Understanding Types, Causes, and Fixes
SES bounce rate is the single most controllable metric affecting your account's sending health. This guide breaks down hard vs. soft bounces, how each affects your reputation, and the list management practices that keep rates low.
November 25, 2025 · 8 min read
EC2 Patch Management with AWS Systems Manager: Keeping Instances Current
Unpatched EC2 instances are a leading source of AWS security findings — and a common path to account compromise. AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager automates patching across your entire fleet. Here's how to set it up correctly.
November 22, 2025 · 9 min read
Migrating to IMDSv2: Blocking SSRF Attacks on EC2
IMDSv1 is exploitable via SSRF — a single vulnerable web app can hand an attacker your EC2 instance credentials. IMDSv2 requires a session-oriented token request that breaks the attack chain. Here's how to migrate without breaking your applications.
November 21, 2025 · 8 min read
EC2 Security Groups Audit: Finding and Fixing Dangerous Rules
Overly permissive security groups are one of the most common findings in AWS security reviews. This guide shows how to audit every security group in your account, identify dangerous 0.0.0.0/0 rules, and build a process to catch drift before it becomes a breach.
November 19, 2025 · 8 min read
Essential AWS Config Rules: The Security and Compliance Checks That Actually Matter
AWS offers 300+ managed Config rules. Most organizations enable too few or too many — either missing critical security checks or drowning in low-signal findings. These are the rules that deliver the highest signal-to-noise ratio for security and compliance.
November 10, 2025 · 10 min read
AWS Config Setup: Recording Resources and Evaluating Compliance at Scale
AWS Config continuously records resource configurations and evaluates them against rules — but only for the resource types you tell it to track, and only in the regions you enable it. A misconfigured Config setup creates false confidence. Here's how to do it right.
November 9, 2025 · 9 min read
AWS Organization Trail: Setting Up Centralized Audit Logging for All Member Accounts
An organization trail captures management events from every account in your AWS Organization and delivers them to a single S3 bucket. It's the foundation of cross-account security investigation — and most organizations don't have it configured correctly.
November 7, 2025 · 8 min read
AWS CloudTrail Log Analysis: Athena Queries and CloudTrail Lake for Security Investigation
GuardDuty tells you something suspicious happened. CloudTrail tells you exactly what. Knowing how to query CloudTrail logs efficiently — through Athena or CloudTrail Lake — is the difference between a 30-minute investigation and a 3-day one.
November 6, 2025 · 10 min read
AWS CloudTrail Alerting: Detecting Critical API Events in Near Real Time
Raw CloudTrail logs don't alert on anything by default. Turning the audit trail into a real-time detection system requires EventBridge rules, CloudWatch metric filters, or both. This guide covers the events worth alerting on and how to build the detection pipeline.
November 5, 2025 · 9 min read
AWS CloudTrail Best Practices: Audit Logging Configuration That Actually Covers Your Environment
CloudTrail is the evidentiary foundation of every AWS security investigation. Most accounts have it partially configured — missing data events, logging to unsecured buckets, or running trails that exclude critical API calls. Here's what a complete configuration looks like.
November 4, 2025 · 10 min read
AWS GuardDuty Multi-Account: Centralized Threat Detection Across Your Organization
Running GuardDuty account-by-account creates blind spots. The delegated administrator model centralizes findings from every account in your AWS Organization — here's how to set it up and what you gain from it.
November 1, 2025 · 8 min read
AWS GuardDuty Findings: Severity Levels, Finding Types, and Response Playbooks
GuardDuty generates findings across credential access, network, S3, and container threat categories. Understanding what each finding type means — and how to respond — determines whether your threat detection actually prevents incidents.
October 31, 2025 · 10 min read
AWS GuardDuty Setup: Complete Configuration Guide for Threat Detection
GuardDuty provides ML-based threat detection across CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, and DNS — but only if configured correctly. This guide covers organization-wide deployment, protection plans, and the settings that actually matter.
October 30, 2025 · 9 min read
AWS IAM Security Monitoring: Detect Root Logins, MFA Gaps, and Policy Drift
IAM credentials are the most common AWS breach vector. This guide covers root account login detection, MFA gap identification, IAM policy drift monitoring, and the pipeline that ties it all together.
October 26, 2025 · 11 min read
AWS Multi-Account Monitoring: Unified Visibility Across Your Organization
The multi-account architecture AWS recommends for security isolation creates a monitoring gap: each account is an island. Here's how to build unified visibility across security, billing, and compliance — and where native tools fall short.
October 22, 2025 · 10 min read
AWS Security Monitoring Tools Compared: GuardDuty, CloudTrail, Security Hub & Beyond
GuardDuty, CloudTrail, Security Hub, Config — AWS's native monitoring stack is powerful but fragmented. This comparison breaks down what each tool covers, where each falls short, and how to build a complete stack without the gaps.
October 19, 2025 · 11 min read