IAM
12 articles on IAM — AWS security, compliance, and account management from the Vigilare team.
MFA Everywhere: The Cheapest Security Upgrade for Your AWS Account
Multi-factor authentication costs nothing and blocks the most common attack vector. Here's how to enable MFA on every account that matters — root, IAM users, and SSO — with step-by-step instructions.
Viktor B. · May 1, 2026 · 7 min read
The Solo Engineer's Guide to AWS IAM: Stop Using Root
You're the only engineer. You've been using the root account for everything. Here's the practical, no-BS guide to setting up IAM properly — in under 20 minutes, with the least possible ongoing maintenance.
Viktor B. · February 13, 2026 · 10 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.
Vigilare Engineering · February 1, 2026 · 9 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.
Vigilare Engineering · January 20, 2026 · 9 min read
AWS AssumeRole Monitoring: Detecting Unauthorized Cross-Account Access
Role assumption is the primary mechanism for cross-account access in AWS, and unauthorized assumption is a key signal of compromise or misconfiguration. This guide covers monitoring AssumeRole activity with CloudTrail and building alerts for suspicious patterns.
Viktor B. · January 7, 2026 · 8 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.
Vigilare Engineering · 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.
Vigilare Engineering · January 4, 2026 · 9 min read
AWS Account Compromise Response: What to Do in the First Hour
AWS account compromise — typically via stolen IAM credentials — requires immediate, specific actions to contain damage. This guide covers the response playbook for the most common compromise scenario, from first detection to verified containment.
Viktor B. · December 28, 2025 · 9 min read
AWS Lambda IAM Permissions: Implementing Least Privilege for Serverless Functions
Lambda execution roles are where serverless security often fails. This guide covers how to define, audit, and automate minimum-permission execution roles for Lambda functions at scale.
Viktor B. · December 24, 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.
Vigilare Engineering · December 16, 2025 · 9 min read
AWS Security Checklist for Startups: The 15-Minute Setup
You don't need a security team to secure your AWS account. This checklist covers the exact steps — in order of impact — that every startup should complete in their first 15 minutes with a new AWS account.
Viktor B. · November 21, 2025 · 8 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.
Vigilare Engineering · October 26, 2025 · 11 min read