Security Outcomes, Not Just Deliverables

The Challenge

A regional bank with 1,200 employees had grown its AWS environment organically over five years — resulting in overly permissive IAM roles, flat network architecture, and no micro-segmentation between workloads. A third-party pen test flagged lateral movement as a critical risk. The security team had the mandate to fix it but not the in-house expertise to design a Zero Trust architecture from scratch.

Our Approach

We conducted a full Zero Trust maturity assessment against NIST SP 800-207, mapped all IAM roles and cross-account trust relationships, and designed a least-privilege IAM architecture with attribute-based access control. We implemented VPC micro-segmentation, deployed AWS Organizations SCPs to enforce guardrails, and integrated AWS IAM Identity Center for centralized identity management across 14 AWS accounts.

Outcomes

• Reduced overly permissive IAM roles by 94% (from 340 to 21)
• Implemented micro-segmentation across 14 AWS accounts with zero production downtime
• Achieved SOC 2 Type II readiness within 90 days of engagement start
• Eliminated all critical and high findings from follow-up pen test

The Challenge

A healthcare SaaS company processing PHI for 40+ hospital clients was preparing for a HIPAA audit and discovered significant gaps in their Azure security posture — including unencrypted storage accounts, missing diagnostic logging, and Azure AD configurations that didn't meet HIPAA technical safeguard requirements. They had 60 days before the audit.

Our Approach

We performed an accelerated Azure security posture assessment using Microsoft Defender for Cloud and CIS Azure Benchmark tooling, prioritized findings by HIPAA relevance and exploitability, and executed a phased remediation sprint. We hardened Azure AD Conditional Access policies, implemented Azure Policy for continuous compliance enforcement, enabled Microsoft Sentinel for SIEM, and documented all controls for audit evidence.

Outcomes

• Remediated 47 of 52 critical and high findings within 45 days
• Passed HIPAA technical safeguards audit with zero major findings
• Deployed Microsoft Sentinel with 23 custom detection rules for PHI access anomalies
• Reduced mean time to detect (MTTD) from 11 days to under 4 hours

The Challenge

A mid-market manufacturer with 8 facilities across North America was running end-of-life Cisco ASA firewalls with 6-year-old rule sets — including hundreds of 'any/any' permit rules that had never been reviewed. A ransomware incident at a peer company prompted the board to mandate a full firewall modernization within one fiscal year.

Our Approach

We designed a Palo Alto Networks NGFW architecture using PA-Series hardware at each site with Panorama for centralized management. We conducted a full rule base audit, eliminated 'any/any' rules, and implemented application-based policies using App-ID. We deployed Threat Prevention, WildFire, and URL Filtering profiles, and configured GlobalProtect for 400+ remote workers. The migration was executed site-by-site with zero unplanned downtime.

Outcomes

• Replaced 8 end-of-life ASA firewalls across all sites in 18 weeks
• Reduced firewall rule count from 1,847 to 312 through policy consolidation
• Blocked 3,200+ malicious connections in first 30 days of WildFire operation
• Achieved full Panorama visibility across all sites within 6 weeks of project start

The Challenge

A large law firm had grown its cloud footprint through a series of acquisitions — ending up with workloads split across AWS and Azure, managed by different teams with different security standards. Client data governance requirements and an upcoming ISO 27001 certification audit required a unified security posture assessment and remediation roadmap across both environments.

Our Approach

We conducted a simultaneous assessment of both cloud environments against ISO 27001 Annex A controls and CIS Benchmarks, mapped findings to a unified risk register, and produced a consolidated remediation roadmap with effort estimates and ownership assignments. We also designed a unified logging and SIEM architecture using Microsoft Sentinel to provide cross-cloud visibility from a single pane of glass.

Outcomes

• Identified 89 findings across both environments, prioritized into 3 remediation tiers
• Delivered executive risk summary and board presentation within 3 weeks
• Designed unified SIEM architecture covering 100% of cloud workloads
• Client achieved ISO 27001 certification 4 months after remediation roadmap delivery