Cloud work doesn’t start with services. It starts with the account.
Before deploying any workloads, I focused on establishing a secure, enterprise-ready AWS foundation aligned with real-world production standards.
Key areas addressed:
 AWS Account Security & Governance
Root account lockdown (MFA, no access keys, billing controls)
Cost monitoring and budget alerts from day one
 IAM & Access Management (Best Practices)
Role-based access control (RBAC) using IAM roles
Elimination of standing admin privileges
MFA enforced for all human access
 AWS IAM Identity Center (SSO)
Centralized identity and authentication
Permission sets instead of ad-hoc IAM policies
Temporary credentials aligned with AWS Organizations and SCP-ready patterns
茶 Auditability, Compliance & Threat Detection
CloudTrail enabled across all regions for API auditing
AWS Config for configuration and change tracking
GuardDuty for continuous threat detection
Outcome:
An AWS account that is secure, observable, auditable, and scalable before any workloads are introduced — the same baseline expected in regulated and production environments.
This kind of foundation reduces security risk, accelerates future delivery, and prevents painful rework later.
Cloud maturity isn’t about spinning up resources fast.
It’s about governance, security, and intent from day one.