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KRGI

Securing Assessments & Examinations on AWS

Short Description

KRGI, a higher education institution, required a secure, governed, and automated AWS
environment for its Assessments & Examinations application. By leveraging AWS
Control Tower, IAM Identity Center (SSO), MFA, SCPs, CloudTrail, and Security Hub,
the institution implemented a cloud-native governance and security model that ensures
compliance, transparency, and exam integrity while reducing operational overhead.

Problem Statement / Definition

KRGI’s examination platform was initially deployed in a fragmented AWS setup without
standardized governance or centralized security. This posed several risks:

Access Management Gaps: Lack of unified IAM and MFA led to credential misuse concerns.

Audit & Compliance Challenges: No centralized logging, weak enforcement of CIS
controls, and limited exam activity visibility.

Operational Inefficiency: Manual provisioning of exam environments delayed assessment readiness.

Governance Risks: No preventive guardrails or SCPs, increasing risk of data
exposure and mis configurations.

The institution required a multi-account, secure, and automated landing zone with built
in governance to safeguard student data, meet compliance benchmarks, and streamline
exam operations.

Project Info

  • Client:

    KRGI

  • Services:

    Securing Assessments & Examinations on AWS

  • Category:

    EduTech

Proposed Solution & Architecture

Governance & Landing Zone Setup

  • Deployed AWS Control Tower with OUs for Development, Test, and Production exam environments.
  • Enforced Service Control Policies (SCPs) to block risky services, enforce encryption, and mandate tagging.
  • Applied mandatory Control Tower guardrails (preventive and detective) to maintain compliance baselines.

Identity & Access Management

  • Integrated AWS IAM Identity Center (SSO) for centralized user access (faculty, examiners, administrators).
  • Enforced MFA for all privileged roles and replaced long-lived IAM credentials with short-lived session tokens.
  • Adopted least-privilege IAM policies and automated access reviews for exam staff.

Monitoring & Compliance

  • Enabled AWS CloudTrail org-wide logging with log integrity validation for audit readiness.
  • Configured AWS Security Hub for CIS Benchmark monitoring, IAM Access Analyzer, and compliance scoring.
  • Activated AWS Config rules and CloudWatch alarms for continuous compliance and anomaly detection.

CloudOps & Automation

  • Implemented Account Factory for Terraform (AFT) to provision exam environments with consistent baseline controls.
  • Adopted Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/CDK) pipelines for application deployments.
  • Applied AWS Budgets with tagging enforcement to track and control departmental exam costs.

Outcomes of Project & Success Metrics

  • Security & Compliance
  • Achieved >95% CIS compliance in Security Hub across all exam accounts.
  • 100% MFA adoption for all faculty and administrators.
  • Centralized CloudTrail logging eliminated audit gaps.
  • Operational Improvements
  • Exam environments provisioned in <3 hours (reduced from 1–2 weeks).
  • Automated deployment pipelines reduced human errors and misconfigurations.
  • Governance & Monitoring
  • 100% exam accounts governed under Control Tower OUs.
  • SCPs prevented risky service usage and enforced encryption by default.
  • Compliance drift reduced by 70% with Config + Security Hub automation.

TCO Analysis Performed

  • 30% IT operations savings by eliminating manual IAM and account provisioning tasks.
  • 25% compliance cost reduction by using AWS-native monitoring (Security Hub, Config, GuardDuty) instead of third-party tools.
  • Reduced exam infrastructure costs with Graviton-based EC2 instances and automated shutdown of idle environments.

Lessons Learned

MFA + SSO adoption was critical to reduce credential risks and secure exam access.

Preventive SCPs and Guardrails minimized misconfigurations before deployment.

Org-wide CloudTrail with log integrity validation ensured accountability for exam
activities.

Automation (AFT + IaC) accelerated environment setup and improved exam
readiness.

Balancing strict compliance vs. user flexibility required careful tuning of IAM
policies for faculty.