Getting Started with Vigilare: From Zero to Protected in 5 Minutes

Vigilare monitors your AWS account for security threats, billing anomalies, compliance drift, and the specific risk patterns that lead to account suspension. Setup takes under five minutes and requires no agents, no sidecars, and no changes to your existing infrastructure. Here's how.

What You'll Need

• An AWS account with permissions to deploy IAM roles and a CloudFormation stack (or Terraform)
• A Vigilare account — sign up at vigilare.io (14-day free trial, no credit card required)
• About five minutes

Step 1: Sign Up and Create Your Organization

Go to vigilare.io/signup. Enter your email and create a password. You'll land on the organization setup page where you name your workspace. This is the container for all your AWS accounts — if you manage multiple accounts, they all live here.

Step 2: Connect Your First AWS Account

Click "Add Account" in the dashboard. Vigilare gives you two connection options:

Option A: Terraform (recommended)

Copy the Terraform module code from the dashboard. It looks like this:

module "vigilare" {
  source  = "vigilare/monitor/aws"
  version = "~> 2.0"

  external_id = "your-unique-external-id"
}

Run terraform init and terraform apply. The module creates a read-only IAM role that Vigilare assumes to collect monitoring data. It does not create any compute resources, does not modify your existing infrastructure, and does not have write access to anything in your account.

Option B: CloudFormation

Click the CloudFormation launch button in the dashboard. It opens the AWS CloudFormation console with a pre-filled template. Review the resources (one IAM role, one IAM policy), accept the capabilities acknowledgment, and click "Create stack." Done in about 90 seconds.

Step 3: Wait for the First Scan

After connecting, Vigilare performs an initial scan of your account. This typically takes 2-3 minutes. It discovers your resources, establishes billing baselines, evaluates your security configuration, and calculates your initial risk score.

When the scan completes, your dashboard populates with your account's current state: the risk score, any active findings, billing trends, and account health indicators.

Step 4: Set Up Notifications

Go to Settings → Notifications. Connect your preferred alert channels:

• Email — enabled by default for your signup address
• Slack — click "Connect Slack," authorize the integration, and choose a channel. Most teams use a dedicated #aws-alerts channel
• PagerDuty / Opsgenie — paste your integration key for critical alerts that should page someone
• Webhooks — for custom integrations with your existing tooling

Configure alert routing: critical findings (risk score drops, active security threats, billing anomalies) go to Slack and PagerDuty. Informational findings (compliance recommendations, optimization suggestions) go to email for weekly review.

Step 5: Review Your Risk Score

Your risk score is a number from 0 to 100 that reflects your account's overall health across four dimensions: security posture, billing health, compliance status, and operational risk. A score above 80 means your account is in good shape. Below 60 means there are issues worth addressing soon. Below 40 means something needs immediate attention.

Click into the risk score to see what's contributing to it. Each finding is actionable — it tells you what the issue is, why it matters, and how to fix it.

What Happens Next

Vigilare continuously monitors your account at 5-minute intervals. It watches for billing anomalies by comparing current spend against your rolling baseline. It detects security threats by analyzing GuardDuty findings, IAM changes, and CloudTrail activity. It tracks compliance by evaluating your Config rules and security group configurations. And it monitors the account health signals — SES reputation, service quotas, billing status — that determine whether your account is at risk of AWS enforcement.

If anything changes, you'll know within minutes. Not hours, not the next day — minutes.

Adding More Accounts

If you manage multiple AWS accounts — production, staging, a client account — add each one by repeating Step 2. The Vigilare dashboard shows all accounts in a single view with per-account risk scores and the ability to drill into any account's details.

Related Reading

• Vigilare vs AWS-native tools — what you get beyond CloudWatch
• Terraform module documentation
• Vigilare API reference
• AWS security checklist for startups