Zero Trust on AWS for Lean Teams: What to Do First

Zero Trust that small teams can sustain

“Zero Trust” gets overcomplicated quickly. For most SMBs, the goal is simple: reduce blast radius, tighten identity, and increase visibility—without creating a helpdesk nightmare.

Start with identity (because everything depends on it)

• MFA everywhere and enforce it for console + privileged actions.
• Role-based access with short-lived credentials; avoid long-lived keys.
• Break-glass access that is monitored and rarely used.

Segment the environment

Segmentation is what turns “least privilege” into reality:

• Separate production from non-prod with account or VPC boundaries.
• Use security groups as allow lists with standardized patterns.
• Control egress for critical workloads (NAT + allowlisted destinations where possible).

Verify continuously with telemetry

• CloudTrail + Config centralized and retained.
• VPC Flow logs for key segments.
• Alerting for high-signal events (root usage, policy changes, unusual API calls).

Apply policy as code (lightweight)

You don’t need a massive platform team to enforce policy:

• Use Infrastructure-as-Code and code reviews as your primary gate.
• Add a small set of “stop the line” checks (public buckets, wide-open security groups, unencrypted storage).

What to avoid

• Buying tools before you have ownership and process.
• Creating exceptions you can’t track.
• Trying to perfect everything before shipping anything.

Next steps

We can help you define a 30–60 day Zero Trust backlog aligned to your business and compliance needs—then implement guardrails that don’t slow delivery.