How is this different from your open-source aws-startup-security-baseline?

The open-source repo is the same 12 controls — anyone can pip-clone it and apply. This engagement covers (a) the India-specific overlays (region-lock SCPs, DPDP tagging, RBI overlays where relevant), (b) tuning the baseline to your specific AWS account state, (c) handling existing brownfield resources (we don't break what's already running), and (d) optional ongoing maintenance via the monthly retainer. Think of the OSS as the kit, this engagement as the build + handoff.

We're already on us-east-1 with running production. Will the region-lock break things?

No — the SCP only blocks NEW resource creation outside approved regions. Existing resources continue to run. We design a migration plan separately if you need to move existing prod to ap-south-1, but that's a different engagement scoped to your specific data flows.

Total monthly cost of running these controls — is the ~₹3,500 estimate realistic?

At seed-stage AWS spend (sub-$10k/month total), yes. The pay-per-event services (GuardDuty, Security Hub) scale with CloudTrail event volume and VPC Flow Log volume. As you grow past $50k/month total AWS spend, baseline tooling cost grows roughly proportionally — but as a percentage of total AWS spend it stays under 1%.

Do you support multi-account / AWS Organizations setups?

The baseline is designed for single-account startups (most pre-Series-A teams). When you cross into multi-account / AWS Organizations / Control Tower territory (typically 25+ engineers, prod/staging/dev separation), the baseline is no longer the right shape — you need org-wide CloudTrail aggregation, IAM Identity Center, SCPs at the OU level. We can help architect that transition under a separate engagement.

What about Kubernetes on EKS? Is that covered?

EKS cluster security is a related but separate concern — see our Kubernetes Security Audit page (/services/kubernetes-security-audit-india/) for that scope. The AWS baseline covers what's beneath EKS (IAM, KMS, networking, GuardDuty), not what's inside the cluster (RBAC, network policies, admission controllers).

All Services

AWS Security Baseline for Startups in India

The 12 AWS security controls every Indian seed startup should turn on this afternoon — region-locked to ap-south-1, DPDP-aware, RBI-overlay-ready. Same opinionated baseline we open-sourced as aws-startup-security-baseline. Built for ₹40k-month retainers, not enterprise CAPEX.

3 days for the baseline apply, 10 days for India-specific hardening, plus optional monthly retainer for ongoing tuning

The Problem

Indian seed startups inherit AWS Console defaults that were designed for US-based enterprises. Default region us-east-1 (which violates DPDP localization for any Indian-user data). Default S3 ACLs that allow accidentally-public buckets. No CloudTrail (so when something breaks at 2 AM you have no audit trail). No GuardDuty (so cryptominers running on your account go undetected for weeks). The fix isn't 200 CIS controls — it's the 12 that prevent the most painful failure modes for a 5-engineer team. We open-sourced our exact baseline at github.com/avinash-matrixgard/aws-startup-security-baseline. This page is the engagement that ships and tunes it for your specific account.

Who This Is For

Pre-seed to Series A startups (5-30 engineers) running production workloads on AWS, headquartered in or serving Indian users. Especially relevant if you're (a) about to raise / about to ship to your first enterprise customer / about to face a customer security questionnaire, or (b) an Indian fintech / healthtech / B2C SaaS where DPDP and RBI overlays add specific Indian requirements on top of the generic AWS baseline.

Typical Outcomes

Total monthly AWS security tooling cost: ~$10-40 USD (~₹800-3,500) at startup scale — less than one engineer's lunch budget

DPDP data localization defensible — every personal data field traceable to an India-region store

Customer security questionnaires answered in hours instead of days — the baseline ships with the evidence pack

GuardDuty + Security Hub findings triaged and routed, not just enabled-and-ignored

Engineering velocity preserved — security gates fail-soft (warn, don't block) by default until you're ready to tighten them

Account ready for Series A technical due diligence on the security side

Timeline Options

Baseline Apply (3 days)

Terraform applied for all 12 controls via IaC, no Console clicks
SNS topic + email subscription confirmed, alerts flowing
AFSBP findings reviewed, top 10 prioritized for next sprint
30-min handover briefing for your tech lead

Baseline + India-Specific Hardening (10 days)

Everything in Baseline Apply
Region-lock SCPs deployed
DPDP data-classification tagging across all data stores
Incident response runbook tailored to your stack
Cost-review template + first month's review delivered

Baseline + Hardening + Monthly Retainer (10 days + monthly)

Everything in Baseline + India-Specific Hardening
Monthly retainer covering: AFSBP finding triage, quarterly access reviews, monthly cost reviews, IAM access analyzer remediation, Security Hub standard updates
Direct Slack channel with the MatrixGard team
First-year coverage of any new AWS service rollouts that affect baseline (e.g., new GuardDuty data sources)

This might not be a fit if...

You operate exclusively outside India and DPDP / RBI don't apply (the generic open-source baseline is enough — clone the repo)
You're at Series C+ with a dedicated cloud security team (you've outgrown a baseline; you need a security architect)
You're not on AWS (we cover GCP and Azure under separate engagements; this page is AWS-specific)
You want a generic CIS Benchmark application (the whole point of our baseline is opinionated reduction — if you want all 140 controls, our open-source repo's skip-list explains why we don't ship them)

What You Get

12 controls deployed as Terraform: IAM password policy, root MFA enforcement alarms, multi-region CloudTrail with KMS encryption, S3 account-level public access block, GuardDuty, Security Hub + AFSBP standard, IAM Access Analyzer, default EBS encryption, default-VPC Flow Logs, AWS Config recorder, Cost Anomaly Detection, AWS Budgets monthly cap

Region-lock enforcement — IAM SCP / Service Control Policies preventing resource creation outside ap-south-1 (or any other approved India region) for any account handling Indian-user data

DPDP-aware data-classification tagging — every S3 bucket / RDS instance / EBS volume tagged with data-residency requirement, automated audit job flagging anything with personal data outside India

RBI overlay (where applicable) — additional controls for fintech use cases: KMS rotation cadence, audit-log retention, HSM-backed key generation if required by your license category

CloudWatch + GuardDuty + Security Hub alerts wired to a single SNS topic delivered to your team's Slack / PagerDuty / email

Cost monitoring stack — AWS Cost Anomaly Detection + Budgets with INR-context thresholds (we work in rupees not abstract dollar amounts), monthly cost-review template

Incident response runbook covering the top 5 failure modes specific to Indian startups (S3 leak, IAM compromise, runaway compute, DDoS, data-residency violation)

Handover documentation in our standard format — every control documented with what it does, why it matters, what breaks if you skip it, when to graduate off it

The Transformation

Before

Account default region us-east-1 — DPDP localization invisible to anyone reading the AWS Console
S3 buckets created at random, some public, no account-level guardrail
No CloudTrail — when something happens at 2 AM there's no record of who did what
Root account used for routine deploys, MFA optional
No cost alerting — you find out about a $4,000 surprise charge from the monthly invoice

After

All resources locked to ap-south-1 via SCP, DPDP localization defensible to auditors
Account-level S3 public access block enforced — no accidentally-public buckets possible, even by mistake
CloudTrail multi-region with KMS encryption, log file validation, immutable audit trail
Root MFA enforced + alarmed, console-no-MFA login alerts firing within 5 min
AWS Cost Anomaly Detection + Budgets with INR-aware thresholds, surprise charges caught within 24 hrs

Engagement Models

Project-based

Fixed scope, fixed timeline, fixed price. Ideal for specific security initiatives.

Retainer

Ongoing support with priority response. Perfect for continuous security needs.

What influences pricing?

Team size and environment complexity
Timeline and urgency requirements
Scope of systems and platforms
Ongoing support and maintenance needs

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