Welcome to Silicon Overdrive!
ID-Scan is a recognized animal identity database based on each animal’s own unique, incorruptible biometric identity. ID-Scan aims for an animal’s nose-print to do for the livestock industry what fingerprints have done for humans regarding banking, insurance, trading, and crime prevention.
ID-Scan needed to ensure that their environment adheres to AWS best practices and has all the necessary prerequisites in place to leverage the six pillars, with a primary emphasis on security. This is crucial for compliance, especially considering the hosting of its animal identity database. This database serves as a secure platform for professionals in the livestock industry and rhino protection initiative to share pertinent information related to traceability, animal welfare, biosecurity, consumer standards, and best practices in animal management.
It is essential for ID-Scan not only to safeguard its data against hackers and poachers but also to recognize that any failure, such as data corruption, could significantly impact farmers’ revenue and the well-being of their livestock.
Silicon Overdrive conducted an AWS Well-Architected Framework Review (WAFR) for the ID-Scan production environment, prioritizing security, cost, and compliance.
The review included an examination of CloudWatch alarms, CPU usage, and the performance of ID-Scan’s RDS database. Notably, the AWS Team set up CloudWatch alarms to trigger alerts when CPU usage neared the threshold, ensuring timely notification of potential performance issues. This proactive approach to monitoring was essential in maintaining system reliability.
Following the review, Silicon Overdrive implemented Lambda automation.
This automation was strategically used to automate the starting and stopping of RDS and EC2 instances during non-peak hours, such as evenings and weekends. Instances were programmed to start in the morning and stop in the afternoon, resulting in substantial cost savings without compromising operational readiness. This cost-effective approach to resource management played a crucial role in optimizing ID-Scan’s cloud infrastructure.
The review also placed a strong emphasis on resource management, ensuring that compute resources were allocated efficiently according to the customer’s requirements. This cost awareness strategy was the result of ID-Scan’s proactive engagement during the cost optimization phase and this has allowed the ID-Scan team greater autonomy and insight while managing their environment. Ultimately this contributes to the overall cost-effectiveness and improved resource utilization within their environment.
By addressing the Security pillar, the customer was able to implement further safeguards thus improving their overall security posture and compliance. Remediations included restricting access to internal services in the account only. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) was implemented to enhance network security for the internal and development teams. These measures improved their security posture, reducing the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches.
The customer’s account-level security was also a focal point of the review. Password policies were significantly enhanced, with multi-factor authentication (MFA) enforced. These security measures added a robust layer of defense to their account security, reducing the risk of unauthorized access.
To further bolster data security, the well-architected review included guidance on encrypting volumes. Silicon Overdrive also assisted the client in moving their instances that were in public subnets into private subnets. This guidance ensured that sensitive information remained safeguarded against potential breaches, aligning their infrastructure with the highest data protection standards.
After a successful Well-Architected Framework Review, these security and compliance measures elevated ID-Scan’s AWS environment to a new level of security and regulatory compliance while also optimizing the overall running costs of the environment.
The comprehensive review not only identified areas of improvement but also implemented a range of measures that significantly enhanced the customer’s cloud infrastructure, leading to greater efficiency, security, and cost-effectiveness.
As ID-Scan continues its mission to safeguard animals through technology, it does so with the knowledge that its cloud infrastructure is as efficient as its cause is impactful.
Esias Bootha, Chief Technology Officer at ID-Scan, said, “I found Silicon Overdrive to be extremely professional, with a focus on customer satisfaction. The support, guidance and assistance I received were great and working with a professional and highly skilled team was a pleasure.”
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