Keeping High-Visibility Digital Platforms Secure and Resilient
Updated: 2 days ago
The Challenge
A federal defense organization relies on a portfolio of high-visibility public websites to support recruiting and public engagement. These digital platforms serve millions of public interactions and require reliable, secure infrastructure capable of supporting continuous public access.
The organization needed experienced AWS managed services support across development, test, and production environments. The work required more than day-to-day cloud administration. Security, architecture, performance, resilience, cost management, and ongoing technical improvements all had to be managed across an interconnected AWS environment.
With 11 mission-critical public-facing websites operating across 14 AWS accounts, changes to infrastructure or security could directly affect systems central to the organization's public mission.
KITC's Role
KITC serves as the AWS Managed Service Provider, supporting the cloud infrastructure behind all 11 websites across development, test, and production environments.
The team manages AWS infrastructure and cloud operations, including compute and container environments, networking, identity, security, logging, monitoring, and operational support. KITC monitors application and infrastructure health, responds to operational issues, supports environment changes, and identifies improvements to availability, performance, resilience, and maintainability.
KITC's responsibilities also extend into enterprise cloud architecture. The team develops cloud architecture diagrams, AWS environment designs, reference architectures, technical standards, system integration diagrams, and architecture recommendations used to guide changes and future technical decisions.
Protecting Public-Facing Systems
Security is integrated throughout the managed cloud environment.
KITC performs continuous security monitoring, vulnerability management, configuration reviews, identity and access management, incident response support, and compliance monitoring aligned with applicable DoD RMF, FISMA, and STIG requirements.
The team conducts recurring vulnerability scans of public-facing web applications, analyzes identified vulnerabilities, coordinates remediation with developers and technical stakeholders, and validates corrective actions.
KITC also maintains layered security protections across the AWS environment, including web application firewall and DDoS protections, role-based access controls, encryption, centralized logging, monitoring, and alerting.
When security incidents or operational issues occur, KITC supports detection, containment, mitigation, recovery, and coordination with the appropriate stakeholders to restore normal operations and reduce mission impact.
Guiding Cloud Architecture and Improvement
KITC uses its day-to-day knowledge of the environment to identify longer-term architecture and operational improvements.
The team conducts AWS Well-Architected Reviews to evaluate the health of the cloud environment and identify opportunities across security, reliability, operational effectiveness, performance, and cost. KITC documents findings and provides architecture recommendations to help stakeholders prioritize improvements.
This work gives the organization technical guidance based on direct operational experience with the systems and a detailed understanding of the environment.
Managing Cloud Cost and Utilization
KITC also provides FinOps and cloud governance support across the 14-account AWS environment.
The team monitors cloud spending, resource utilization, allocation, and operational trends and identifies opportunities to improve resource efficiency. KITC uses cloud management and reporting capabilities to give stakeholders greater visibility into AWS consumption and support optimization decisions.
Cost recommendations are evaluated alongside performance, security, and availability requirements to ensure optimization efforts support the operational needs of the public-facing platforms.
The Results
11 mission-critical websites supported. KITC manages the AWS infrastructure supporting a portfolio of high-visibility public-facing websites across development, test, and production environments.
Millions of public interactions supported. KITC's managed cloud services maintain the infrastructure, security, and operational resilience required for digital platforms serving millions of public interactions.
Security integrated into daily cloud operations. KITC performs continuous monitoring, recurring vulnerability scanning, remediation coordination, security control implementation, and incident response support to protect public-facing systems.
Architecture informed by operational experience. KITC develops reference architectures, environment designs, technical standards, integration diagrams, and architecture recommendations and performs AWS Well-Architected Reviews to identify improvements across the environment.
Governance across 14 AWS accounts. KITC provides operational and governance oversight across the multi-account AWS environment, supporting consistent management of infrastructure, security, performance, and cloud resources.
Cloud costs actively managed. KITC's FinOps activities provide stakeholders with visibility into AWS utilization and spending and identify opportunities to improve resource efficiency while maintaining security, availability, and performance.
Ongoing Cloud Operations and Improvement
KITC continues to manage and improve the AWS environment supporting the organization's public-facing digital platforms. The team's responsibilities span cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, architecture, governance, FinOps, and operational support across development, test, and production environments.
KITC's day-to-day involvement gives the team the operational knowledge to identify vulnerabilities, architecture issues, performance concerns, and optimization opportunities and work directly with developers, security personnel, and customer stakeholders to address them. This work supports both the immediate operational needs of the platforms and the continued security, resilience, and efficiency of the cloud environment.