Cloud Maturity Series — Posts 1–3 (LinkedIn Drafts)

Post 1: Start With the Account, Not the App

Most cloud problems don’t start in code.

They start in the AWS account itself.

 

Before VPCs.

Before CI/CD.

Before a single workload is deployed…

 

I lock down the account foundation:

• MFA on the root account

• Root access keys removed

• Break-glass strategy defined

• IAM users eliminated in favor of roles

• Clear ownership and access boundaries

 

Cloud maturity starts at the control plane, not the application layer.

 

#AWS #CloudArchitecture #IAM

#CloudSecurity #PlatformEngineering

#Infrastructure #OpenToWork

Post 2: Identity Is the Real Perimeter

Firewalls don’t protect cloud environments.

Identity does.

 

Once the account is secured, the next layer is IAM done right:

• Role-based access instead of long-lived users

• Least-privilege policies mapped to job function

• Explicit separation between human and workload identities

• MFA everywhere it makes sense

 

In AWS, IAM is the blast radius.

 

If identity is loose,

no amount of network segmentation will save you.

 

Get this layer right and everything downstream becomes safer:

deployments, automation, audits, and incident response.

 

Cloud security isn’t a tool problem.

It’s an identity design problem.

 

#AWSIAM #ZeroTrust #CloudSecurity

#DevSecOps #PlatformEngineering

#InfrastructureAsCode #OpenToWork

Post 3: Auditability Before Availability

Most cloud failures aren’t outages.

They’re untraceable changes.

 

Before scaling workloads or optimizing cost,

I establish control-plane observability.

 

That means always being able to answer:

• Who changed this?

• What changed?

• When did it happen?

• Can we prove it?

 

This layer is built with:

• CloudTrail — immutable API history

• AWS Config — resource state and drift detection

• GuardDuty — security signal, not just logs

 

Compliance benefits (SOC 2, ISO, PCI) are a side effect.

The real value is engineering control.

 

If you can’t reconstruct an incident,

you don’t truly control your environment.

 

Observability isn’t something you add later.

It’s something you start with.

 

#AWS #CloudEngineering #AuditLogging

#IncidentResponse #DevSecOps

#InfrastructureAsCode #OpenToWork