This Part-1 guide is for founders and small product teams shipping their first release on AWS without a full-time DevOps crew. In ~10 minutes you’ll set a rock-solid foundation that stops the classic MVP disasters—surprise bills, insecure accounts, and zero audit trail. We walk you through:
- Root hardening + MFA and IAM admin/SSO
- Wire up Budgets & Cost Anomaly Detection
- Choose a sane region with real-world trade-offs (us-east-1 vs us-east-2, eu-central-1)
- Enable CloudTrail and GuardDuty (plus Slack alerts for instant signal)
- And—when you’re ready—add AWS Organizations for a clean multi-account path
Read this first to ship faster today and avoid expensive fixes tomorrow.
Step-by-step: the 10-minute AWS foundation
1) Lock down the root account (MFA + real contacts)
Do this:
- Add MFA to the root user (passkey/hardware key or TOTP).
- Ensure email & phone match billing and are accessible.
Why: root is “god mode”, compromise = game over.
Console path:
AWS Console → top-right account menu → Security credentials → Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Verify: Try signing in as root—you should be prompted for MFA.
Pitfalls: Fake contact info can get accounts frozen during verification.
2) Create an admin you can actually use (IAM user or SSO)
Do this:
- Prefer IAM Identity Center (SSO) if you have an identity provider, think Google Workspace/Okta/Microsoft Entra.
- If you really really have to create an IAM admin user in an Admins group with
AdministratorAccess. This is a bad practice, static IAM users have static credentials that give a long opportunity window for attackers if leaked. Always prefer IAM Identity Center since it gives you temporary credentials. - Require MFA for that user.
Why: Stop using root; use short-lived or MFA-protected access.
Console path:
- SSO: IAM Identity Center → Enable → Connect IdP
- IAM user: IAM → Users → Create user → Add to group (Admins)
Verify: Sign out, log in as the admin user, confirm permissions.
Pitfalls: Don’t create long-lived access keys unless necessary.
3) Set a budget + anomaly detection (before any deploy)
Do this:
- Create a Monthly Cost Budget (e.g., €500) with alerts at 85%, 100%, and 100% forecast.
- Enable Cost Anomaly Detection (account-level monitor).
Why: Catch spend spikes before they become invoices.
Console path:
Billing → Budgets → Create budget and Billing → Cost Anomaly Detection
Verify: Trigger a tiny service (e.g., a t4g.nano for 10 minutes) and confirm the budget dashboard updates.
Pitfalls: Forgetting forecast alerts; routing alerts to a personal inbox no one checks. We recommend using shared inboxes like Google Groups so multiple people can be notified.
4) Pick a sane Region (us-east-1 vs us-east-2, eu-central-1)
Do this:
- Choose one primary Region based on users + service availability.
- Defaults: us-east-2 (calmer, 3 AZs), or eu-central-1 in EU.
- Use us-east-1 only if you need the newest services and accept occasional turbulence. Read about the latest AWS outage here
Why: Wrong Region = missing services + messy migration later.
Console path:
Region selector at the top right of the console; also check Service Quotas and service availability pages.
Verify: Confirm chosen Region in the console header and note it in your runbook.
Pitfalls: Picking brand-new Regions where your required services aren’t available.
5) Enable CloudTrail (audit trail)
Do this:
- Create a management events trail to a new S3 bucket.
- Add an S3 lifecycle rule (e.g., transition to Glacier after 90 days).
Why: Without an audit trail you can’t answer “who changed what?”
Console path:
CloudTrail → Trails → Create trail → Management events → New S3 bucket
Verify: Perform a simple action (e.g., list S3) and check Event history.
Pitfalls: Leaving logs forever in S3 without lifecycle (cost creep).
6) Turn on GuardDuty (turn key threat detection)
Do this:
- Enable Amazon GuardDuty (default detector).
Why: Catches suspicious activity (crypto-mining attempts, odd data patterns) early.
Console path:
Security → GuardDuty → Enable
Verify: Use Sample Findings to test your alert pipeline (next step).
Pitfalls: Forgetting to wire notifications—detections you don’t see are useless.
7) Pipe alerts to Slack (CloudTrail/GuardDuty/Cost Anomaly → AWS Chatbot)
Do this:
- Create/choose an SNS topic for security and budget alerts.
- Configure AWS Chatbot to post that SNS topic to a Slack channel.
- Add Budget & GuardDuty notifications to the topic.
Why: Alerts you actually see → incidents you actually fix.
Console path:
- AWS Chatbot → Configure client → Slack → Configure channel → Notifications: add SNS
- Then in Budgets & GuardDuty, set notifications to that SNS topic.
Verify: Use GuardDuty → Sample findings and confirm a Slack message lands.
Pitfalls: Alerts routed to personal email, silently ignored.
8) (Optional) Create an Organization (multi-account later)
Do this:
- Enable AWS Organizations and note planned accounts: sandbox, dev, prod, log-archive.
Why: Cleaner boundaries, easier audits/transfers, safer prod.
Console path:
AWS Organizations → Create organization
Verify: Org is active; root email documented; a note exists in your runbook.
Pitfalls: Spinning accounts too early without naming/guardrail plans.
Before you spin up, compute or wire a database, lock in the guardrails that keep your MVP fast, safe, and cheap. This is the minimum viable hygiene—do it once, sleep better forever.
60-second pre-deploy audit (tick each one)
- ☐ Root MFA enabled
- ☐ Admin access via SSO/IAM (with MFA)
- ☐ Monthly budget set (alerts at 85% / 100% / 100% forecast)
- ☐ Cost Anomaly Detection enabled
- ☐ Primary Region chosen & documented
- ☐ CloudTrail → S3 (with lifecycle to archive)
- ☐ GuardDuty enabled
- ☐ Sample finding routed to Slack (SNS → AWS Chatbot → #alerts)
- ☐ (Optional) AWS Organization plan noted (prod / dev / log-archive)
What’s next?
Once the foundation is solid, the next bottleneck is choosing the right compute shape and a VPC that won’t booby-trap your costs. Read our dedicated post — “Building MVP on AWS: Key Services and Benefits for Startups” — to explore what AWS services to choose for MVP.
Ready-made accelerators
You’ve set up the basics—nice. If you’d rather not build everything else from scratch, we’ve got plug-and-play options to speed you up. Check out these ready-made accelerators that handle accounts, security, and deployment so you can focus on the product.
FivexL RightStart
FivexL RightStart gives startups a ready-to-run AWS foundation—secure, scalable, and audit-ready—with multi-account setup, least-privilege access, centralized logging, and cost controls as code so you can ship faster, pass audits, and keep costs predictable.
FivexL’s AWS ECS Blueprint
FivexL’s AWS ECS Blueprint is a ready-to-run container platform on ECS/Fargate with automated CI/CD, autoscaling, private networking, least-privilege access, centralized logging, and audit-friendly defaults—so startups can ship fast, stay reliable, and meet HIPAA/SOC 2.
Infra Clinic for Startups
If you’d like a quick, expert sanity check before you scale, apply for the Infra Clinic for Startups. One startup each month receives a full 1-month Infra Clinic advisory, hands-on DevOps, and AI-powered support — for a symbolic donation to children’s health. Every applicant gets a free discovery call.
Apply and get your free consultation:
Watch the full setup guide
Watch this episode, where our team shows how to set everything up step by step: