Introduction: Securing Startups and Small Businesses in a Complex Cloud Landscape
Startups and small businesses have turned to the cloud in droves for the obvious benefits of scalability and cost efficiency, but many overlook the critical importance of securing their cloud environments. These businesses often lack the large-scale resources of major corporations, making them vulnerable to cyber threats. As IBM reports, the average cost of a single data breach in 2024 is $4.88 million. For startups and small businesses, incurring that level of expenditure can be crippling, and even lead to the shutting down of the business.
Read more: The Seven Biggest Cloud Security Threats to Look Out For
Enter YBIntel, a data-driven small business that offers accurate and regularly updated revenue data for hotels and beverages to the hospitality industry in a very specific market—namely the Texas region in the United States. The company has already been leveraging Amazon Web Services (AWS) since 2018; however, it needed a comprehensive security framework that would suit the unique needs of a startup of its size and not break the bank. The company recognized the potential pitfalls of not having a capable cloud security solution in place and wanted to rectify the situation as soon as possible. By partnering with HTCD and leveraging AWS’s cloud-native security services, YBIntel was able to safeguard its cloud operations and improve its efficiency by saving ~9 working hours per week on ranking and prioritizing vulnerabilities for remediation.
YBIntel’s Challenge: Simplifying Security While Scaling
YBIntel faced a common dilemma for small businesses: how to further improve customer trust and scale its operations securely without overburdening limited IT resources. They needed a solution that would provide comprehensive threat detection, compliance management, and real-time observability without compromising their agility. With a lean in-house team, YBIntel wanted a solution that integrated seamlessly into their AWS environment, offering maximum protection with minimal manual oversight.
This is where HTCD stepped in.
The Solution: Cloud-Native Security + HTCD
YBIntel’s journey to fortified cloud security operations began with leveraging AWS’s cloud-native security services, including:
- GuardDuty: For continuous threat detection and monitoring, flagging any abnormal behavior in real-time.
- Inspector: To automatically assess vulnerabilities and provide insights into how to patch them.
- Config: Ensuring compliance by continuously monitoring AWS resources for misconfigurations.
- IAM Access Analyzer: Identifying resources that may be inadvertently exposed to the public.
- AWS WAF: Providing a customizable web application firewall (WAF) that protects against common web exploits, including malicious traffic and unwanted bot activity.
In addition, HTCD’s security experts recommended enabling Security Lake with the following data sources:
- CloudTrail - Management events
- CloudTrail - Lambda data events
- Route 53
- Security Hub
- VPC Flow Logs
This comprehensive setup provided YBIntel with wide-ranging AWS-native security capabilities including preventive measures through WAF, monitoring and detection via GuardDuty, and both identification and fixes for vulnerabilities through Inspector, among others.
Read more: Revolutionizing SecDataOps with AWS Security Lake: Insights from a Startup
Integration with HTCD: The 15-Minute Game Changer
Once the AWS-native services were set up, HTCD stepped in to do what it does best: maximize the value of cloud security data. The integration process with HTCD took just 15 minutes, during which YBIntel’s AWS security data was seamlessly connected to HTCD’s platform. YBIntel retained its own data though, which kept everything secure and within the company's own environment. This step was crucial not only for meeting compliance requirements but also for keeping costs under control—an important priority for startups and small businesses that need to carefully manage every aspect of their operations.
Read more: What Is Cloud Security: A Comprehensive Guide
Here’s what HTCD delivered:
- Comprehensive Observability: YBIntel gained real-time visibility into security threats across its entire cloud environment.
- Intelligent Prioritization: HTCD’s platform prioritized potential threats based on severity, enabling YBIntel to focus on the most critical risks.
- Advanced Threat Detection: With HTCD’s integration, YBIntel could execute detection queries in plain English (natural language queries), empowering their lean team to investigate threats without needing a deep technical background.
- Compliance Insights: HTCD allowed YBIntel to easily view and manage its compliance requirements, ensuring that the company adhered to industry standards and regulations.
Read more: Compliance Is More Than a Certification
Why Cloud-Native + HTCD is All You Need
In today’s cloud-first world, no one understands the intricacies of cloud security better than the cloud provider itself—AWS. By tapping into AWS’s native services like GuardDuty, Inspector, and Security Lake, HTCD ensures that startups like YBIntel can harness the power of the cloud’s built-in security features without adding complexity.
HTCD complements these services by enhancing observability, automating threat detection, and simplifying compliance. The end result? A cloud environment that is not only secure but also intelligently managed, without adding extra operational overhead.
The Result: A Future-Proof Security Structure
By implementing this integrated cloud-native security approach, YBIntel:
- Reduced risk exposure by identifying and addressing vulnerabilities early.
- Enhanced visibility into their AWS infrastructure, helping them stay ahead of potential threats.
- Achieved full compliance with industry regulations, which boosted customer trust and investor confidence.
In a mere 15 minutes of integration with HTCD, YBIntel uplifted its security operations, gaining real-time insights and threat detection capabilities that would normally require a much larger in-house security team. Now, they are well-prepared for future growth, knowing that their cloud security is continuously monitored and managed by the combined power of AWS native tools and HTCD’s cutting-edge platform.
Here's what Soham Banerjee, Cloud Engineer at YBIntel had to say about this collaboration with HTCD:
“Integrating HTCD with AWS's native security services streamlined our approach to cloud security. With real-time threat detection and intelligent prioritization, we can manage risks efficiently without adding complexity to our workflow. HTCD’s seamless setup and insights have made it easier for us to focus on innovation, confident in our cloud environment’s security and compliance.”
Conclusion: The Power of the Right Security Partnership
YBIntel’s story demonstrates the effectiveness of combining cloud-native security tools with HTCD’s powerful platform. In a world where data breaches can cripple a business overnight, startups and small businesses can’t afford to cut corners on cloud security. With HTCD, startups like YBIntel can focus on growing their business, confident that their cloud security is not only robust but also intelligently managed.
Startups and small businesses don’t need to settle for less when it comes to security. HTCD and AWS cloud-native services provide everything they need to build, scale, and secure their cloud infrastructure.
Let us help your startup grow securely. Contact HTCD today to learn more about how we can fortify your cloud environment just like we did for YBIntel.
