Case Studies | FinTech

Securing and cost optimising a fintech platform on AWS

Well-Architected Review

About

A FinTech business working with Cloud Combinator on AWS. The client is anonymised at their request.

Challenge

The review deliberately prioritised two of the five Well-Architected pillars, reflecting the client's most pressing needs.

Security fit for financial data

Being deeply rooted in the financial sector, the client recognises that the integrity and security of its data are paramount, both for regulatory compliance and for the trust of its stakeholders. The review examined how the platform operates securely, manages identities and permissions, protects data at rest and in transit, and detects and responds to incidents.

Cost control for a start-up

As a start-up, maintaining and controlling cost is of the utmost importance. The review looked at how usage is governed and monitored, how services are

Good foundations, set early

Because the client had only recently begun building on AWS, the goal was to embed best practice while the platform was still young, when it is far cheaper and simpler to get identity, encryption, account structure and cost governance right.

Solution

A Well-Architected Review is a systematic evaluation in which a certified AWS partner assesses an existing workload against the five pillars of the framework: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency and Cost Optimisation. For the client, Cloud Combinator focused the assessment on the Security and Cost pillars.

5

AWS Well-Architected pillars assessed, focused on Security and Cost

28.5 hrs

Estimated remediation effort identified across the findings

$5,000

AWS credit available on remediating over 60% of high risk issues (projected)

By the numbers:

  • 5 - AWS Well-Architected pillars assessed, focused on Security and Cost
  • 28.5 hrs - Estimated remediation effort identified across the findings
  • $5,000 - AWS credit available on remediating over 60% of high risk issues (projected)
Changes

The engagement gave the client a clear, prioritised picture of its security and cost posture on AWS, with every finding tied to a specific remediation action and a path to AWS funding on completion. The remediation effort is estimated and the credit is available on delivery, so the figures below are projected until the work is completed.

  • Security posture assessed — The review covered secure operation, identity and permission management, data protection at rest and in transit, threat detection and incident response.
  • Cost governance mapped — Findings addressed usage governance, cost monitoring and attribution, service and pricing model evaluation, and resource decommissioning.
  • Prioritised remediation roadmap — Each high risk issue was paired with a specific remediation action, an effort estimate and an owner, giving the client a clear order of work.
  • Path to AWS funding — The engagement set out a route to a 5,000 US dollar AWS credit on remediating more than 60 per cent of the high risk issues.
  • Handover — Cloud Combinator agreed to walk the client through the findings to decide which items deliver the most business value before quoting for the remediation work.

With a clear roadmap in hand, the client is positioned to harden its platform and tighten cost governance while it is still early, building a secure, cost-aware AWS foundation ready to scale as the business grows.

AWS Stack

AWS Identity

And Access Management for groups, roles and least privilege access.

AWS Key Management Service

For encryption of data at rest.

Amazon GuardDuty

And AWS Security Hub for threat detection and centralised security findings.

AWS Config

And AWS CloudTrail for compliance monitoring and audit.

Amazon Inspector

For vulnerability management of compute resources.

AWS Budgets

And Cost Explorer forecasting for cost governance and prediction.

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