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 ₹30k-month retainers, not enterprise CAPEX.
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
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, so 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
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
Frequently Asked Questions
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