The challenge

As a leader in wealth management, our client's on-premises infrastructure was a bottleneck, hindering scalability and their defense against modern cyber threats. Their goal was to migrate multiple critical applications to AWS, necessitating a secure and compliant cloud foundation from scratch. The core challenge was to achieve this migration without compromising sensitive financial data, while also establishing consistent security across segregated environments, centralizing threat visibility, and ensuring strict regulatory compliance.

The solution

Our team designed and executed a security-first migration, establishing a robust, compliant, and highly secure AWS environment for the client. We delivered a multi-layered security architecture by taking the following steps:

• Established a secure foundation: Implemented a Control Tower-based Landing Zone, creating a multi-account structure with Organizational Units (OUs) to segregate workloads and enforce separation of duties.
• Enforced centralized governance: Deployed Service Control Policies (SCPs) and AWS Guardrails to apply consistent security and compliance rules across all accounts, preventing policy violations at the source.
• Streamlined identity and access: Implemented AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO) to centralize user management and provide secure, temporary credentials for accessing AWS accounts.
• Secure network hub: Established a centralized transit network using AWS Transit Gateway to simplify and secure communication between Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs). A Palo Alto Next-Generation Firewall was deployed in a dedicated Inspection VPC to monitor and secure all inbound and outbound traffic.
• Executed a secure migration: Migrated all critical application and database servers from the on-premises data centre to AWS securely over an encrypted AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection.
• Implemented robust data encryption: Ensured all sensitive data was protected by implementing encryption at rest using the AWS Key Management Service (KMS).
• Deployed advanced threat detection: Deployed AWS GuardDuty for continuous, intelligent threat detection and AWS Inspector for automated vulnerability scanning, providing proactive security monitoring across the environment.

The impact

The security-first migration to AWS delivered clear, measurable improvements across security and compliance.

• 100% Improvement in Perimeter Security Coverage: Deployed Palo Alto NGFWs with Panorama, consolidating 200+ legacy firewall rules and cutting rule sprawl by 65%.
• 70% Reduction in Privileged Access Risk: Implemented PAM to cut standing privileged credentials and reduce access provisioning time to under 15 minutes, with full session auditability.
• 65% Fewer Unauthorized Access Incidents: Enforced SSO and least-privilege IAM policies with MFA across all identities, driving IAM violations to near-zero within 60 days.
• 65% Reduction in Critical Misconfigurations: CloudAnix delivered continuous cloud security posture monitoring, cutting audit preparation effort by 60% across CIS frameworks.
• 70% Improvement in Regulatory Compliance: Reduced SEBI and PCI-DSS compliance gaps, bringing overall findings from 30+ pre-migration to near-zero on the first post-migration audit.
• 65% Faster Threat Detection: Implemented Amazon GuardDuty for continuous threat monitoring, cutting mean time to detect suspicious activity across all AWS accounts.
• 100% OS Patch Compliance: Established a regular OS patching cadence across all workloads, reducing unpatched vulnerability exposure by 70%.