Security Architecture Review for Startups

Security Debt Compounds. Architecture Debt Is Worse.

You can patch a vulnerable library. You cannot easily patch a fundamentally broken IAM model or a flat network architecture with no segmentation.

Security architecture flaws are the ones that cause catastrophic breaches — the kind where an attacker gets in through one service and walks laterally across your entire infrastructure in 20 minutes.

Our Security Architecture Review identifies these structural weaknesses before they're exploited. We review how your system is designed, not just whether individual components are patched.

What We Review

1. Threat Modeling

Using the STRIDE methodology (Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information Disclosure, Denial of Service, Elevation of Privilege), we model your system's threat landscape:

Enumerate trust boundaries and data flows
Identify attack entry points and adversarial objectives
Map threats to architectural components
Prioritize risks by likelihood and business impact
Produce a threat model diagram (data flow diagram + attack tree)

Output: Threat model document + prioritized threat register

2. IAM & Access Control Review

Poor identity and access management is the root cause of most cloud breaches. We audit:

Identity Architecture

Directory structure and identity provider configuration (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace)
SSO coverage — are all production systems behind SSO?
MFA enforcement and bypass paths
Service account and machine identity management

Authorization Model

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) design — are roles scoped correctly?
Privilege escalation paths — can engineers reach production data without approval?
Segregation of duties — can the same person deploy and approve?
Break-glass procedures — emergency access with full audit trail?

Cloud IAM

AWS IAM policy analysis for least-privilege violations
GCP IAM binding review
Azure RBAC configuration
Cross-account and cross-project access patterns
IAM credential age and rotation policies

3. Cloud Security Posture

We review your cloud configuration against CIS Benchmarks and cloud-native security best practices:

AWS

S3 bucket ACLs and public access settings
Security Groups and NACLs — open ports, 0.0.0.0/0 rules
CloudTrail logging — is it enabled everywhere, is it tamper-proof?
AWS Config rules and drift detection
GuardDuty enablement and alert tuning
Secrets Manager vs hardcoded credentials
VPC flow logs and network segmentation

GCP / Azure

Equivalent configuration reviews for your cloud provider(s)
Cross-cloud identity federation risks

Container & Kubernetes

Pod Security Standards enforcement
RBAC model — are service accounts over-permissioned?
Network policies — is pod-to-pod traffic unrestricted?
Image pull policies and container registry access
Secrets management (are secrets in ConfigMaps or environment variables?)

4. Network Architecture Review

Network segmentation and micro-segmentation design
Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) maturity
Ingress and egress filtering
API gateway and WAF configuration
VPN vs direct public exposure tradeoffs
Data exfiltration controls

5. Data Architecture & Encryption

Data classification and handling procedures
Encryption at rest — are all databases encrypted? Key management?
Encryption in transit — TLS everywhere? Certificate management?
Data residency and sovereignty controls
Backup encryption and recovery testing
PII data mapping and minimization

6. DevSecOps Maturity Assessment

We assess your software delivery pipeline for security integration:

SAST/DAST

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) in CI/CD
Dependency scanning for known CVEs (Snyk, Dependabot, etc.)
Secret scanning in repositories (no hardcoded credentials)
Dynamic testing in staging environments

Deployment Controls

Infrastructure as Code security scanning (tfsec, Checkov, Terrascan)
Container image scanning before deployment
Signed commits and artifact integrity
Immutable infrastructure patterns

Security Observability

Centralized security logging (SIEM)
Alerting on authentication anomalies
Incident response runbooks
Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Respond (MTTR) baselines

Deliverables

Executive Security Posture Report

Overall security maturity rating (1–5 scale)
Top 10 architectural risks with business impact analysis
Roadmap: 30/60/90-day prioritized remediation plan
Compliance gaps (SOC2, ISO 27001, NIST CSF)

Technical Architecture Review Document

Annotated architecture diagrams highlighting risk areas
Full threat model with STRIDE analysis
IAM role analysis with specific over-permission findings
Cloud configuration findings with exact remediation steps

DevSecOps Maturity Scorecard

OWASP SAMM (Software Assurance Maturity Model) score across 15 dimensions
Pipeline security coverage gaps
Recommended tooling and integrations

Remediation Playbook

Step-by-step fix instructions for every finding
Code snippets and Terraform/CloudFormation examples where applicable
Effort estimates and priority tiers

Who This Is For

Pre-compliance startups — getting architecture right before SOC2 or ISO 27001 audit saves 2–3x the effort of fixing it after.

Post-incident companies — if you've had a breach or security scare, understand what architectural decisions enabled it.

Rapidly scaling teams — security architecture that worked at 10 engineers often breaks at 50. Review before scaling.

Enterprise deal acceleration — procurement teams increasingly ask for architecture review evidence, not just pentest reports.

Cloud migrations — moving from monolith to microservices, or on-prem to cloud, is an architectural reset. Get it right the first time.

Relationship to Other Services

A Security Architecture Review is the strategic complement to a VAPT penetration test. VAPT finds exploitable vulnerabilities in what you've built. Architecture review identifies the structural design decisions that create vulnerability classes in the first place.

For full coverage:

Architecture Review → identifies structural risk
VAPT → confirms exploitability
SOC2 Compliance Sprint → converts findings into audit evidence

Timeline & Pricing

| Component | Duration | Notes | |---|---|---| | Threat modeling | 2–3 days | Requires architecture diagrams and walkthrough | | IAM review | 1–2 days | Read-only access to cloud console | | Cloud posture | 1–2 days | CloudSploit or manual assessment | | DevSecOps audit | 1 day | CI/CD pipeline review | | Report writing | 2–3 days | Executive + technical outputs | | Total | 7–14 days | Depends on scope and complexity |

Pricing starts at $3,499 for a focused cloud + IAM review. Full architecture review with threat modeling starts at $5,999.

Start Your Architecture Review

Identify structural security risk before it becomes a breach headline.