A Practical AWS Security Review

Inventory before testing

Identify accounts, regions, services and owners. Include logs and managed services that do not look like traditional servers. Confirm which environments are authorized and define test windows before making any changes to a running workload.

Review identities

Look at privileged roles, trust policies and long-lived credentials. Ask whether a principal can obtain another role or modify its own permissions. Scope policies to required actions and resources; test the impact of reductions before applying them to production.

Review exposure and data

Check object-storage access, public endpoints, network rules and encryption settings against the intended use. A public website bucket and a customer-document bucket have different requirements. Confirm effective access instead of treating a single configuration label as proof of a breach.

Make detection testable

Choose a harmless authorized event and verify that it reaches the logging and alerting path. Identify who responds and how long logs are retained. Record remediation evidence and retest relevant access paths. A configuration review provides a point-in-time assessment, not a guarantee of ongoing compliance.