Most people hear “infrastructure audit” and picture someone generating a PDF full of graphs they will never look at.
That is not what we do. Here is what actually happens when we review your infrastructure, and what you walk away with.
Why companies ask for an audit in the first place
It usually starts with one of these:
- The AWS bill is climbing and nobody can explain why.
- Deployments are fragile. Something breaks every other release.
- The team has grown, but the infrastructure was set up by one person two years ago and nobody fully understands it.
- There is a vague feeling that things are “not great”, but no time to investigate.
The common thread: you know something is off, but do not know where to start fixing it. That is exactly what an audit is for.
What we actually look at
An audit is not a checklist exercise. It is a structured investigation. We typically cover these areas, adjusting based on what matters to your business.
Architecture and design
How are your services structured? Are you running a monolith on a single EC2 instance, or do you have a sprawling microservices setup in ECS? Is the architecture appropriate for your scale and team size, or did someone over-engineer it because a blog post said so? We look at whether the design matches reality.
Networking and security
VPC setup, subnet design, security groups, IAM policies. We are looking for the usual suspects: overly permissive security groups, IAM users with admin access “because it was easier”, missing VPC flow logs, public S3 buckets that were supposed to be temporary.
Compute and scaling
Are you running the right instance types? Is auto-scaling configured, and does it actually work under load? Are you paying for capacity you do not use? We check whether what is running matches what is needed.
CI/CD and deployment
How does code get to production? How long does it take? Is the pipeline reliable? Can you roll back without a fire drill? We trace the path from git push to production and find the weak points.
Monitoring and observability
Can you tell when something is broken before a customer emails you? Are the alerts useful, or is everyone ignoring them? Do you have logs you can actually search? We look at what you are measuring, and whether it is the right thing.
Cost structure
Where is the money going? What is oversized, idle, or misconfigured? Are you using Reserved Instances or Savings Plans where they make sense? We connect architecture decisions to billing impact.
Infrastructure as code
Is your infrastructure defined in code, or is it a collection of manually created resources that nobody dares touch? If you have Terraform or CloudFormation, is it actually covering what is running, or has reality drifted away from the code?
What you get at the end
Not a 50-page report you will never read. You get:
- A prioritized list of issues, categorized by severity and effort. What is critical, what is a quick win, what is a longer-term improvement.
- Clear explanations. For each issue, we explain why it matters. Not just “your security groups are too open”, but what the actual risk is and what to do about it.
- Concrete recommendations. Specific actions, not vague advice. “Move these three services to Graviton instances to save around 30% on compute” beats “consider right-sizing your infrastructure.”
- Cost impact estimates. Where applicable, we tie recommendations to real dollar (or euro) figures.
- An optional walkthrough call. We send over the report first and give you time to read it. If you have questions, or if it helps to talk through what to tackle first, we jump on a call. Some clients want it, some don’t, no pressure either way.
How long does it take?
For a typical setup: 1 to 2 weeks from start to delivery, depending on complexity. We need read-only access to your AWS account (read-only is fine for most of the work) and a couple of conversations with whoever knows the history of your infrastructure.
Larger or more complex environments might take longer. We will tell you upfront.
Do you need one?
Honest answer: not everyone does. If your infrastructure was set up recently by someone experienced, your team understands it, your costs are predictable, and deployments are smooth, you are probably fine.
But if you are dealing with any of the symptoms from the beginning of this post, an audit gives you clarity. You stop guessing and start making decisions based on what is actually there.
Want to find out what is hiding in your infrastructure? Get in touch. We will have a quick conversation about your setup and tell you honestly whether an audit makes sense.