How we built a budget-friendly ISO 27001/SOC 2 compliant AWS environment (Technical Breakdown)

The team implemented cost-effective AWS configurations using native features and open-source tools, focusing on logging (VPC Flow Logs to S3 with Athena queries), identity management (AWS Identity Center for SSO, OIDC for Kubernetes, and eliminating SSH in favor of AWS SSM), and strict network segmentation (removing default VPCs, granular security groups, and stateless NACLs). They enforced data protection with default encryption, S3 Object Lock/EBS Snapshot Lock for ransomware resilience, and KMS key protections, while eliminating unbounded permissions by scoping policies and avoiding default admin roles. Backups were managed via AWS Backup, S3 Cross-Region Replication, and Velero for Kubernetes.