Your AWS journey: The most common mistakes and how to avoid them
AWS is one of the most powerful platforms for scaling and modernising your business, offering endless opportunities to innovate faster, reduce costs and improve resilience.
However, too often, businesses jump in without a clearly defined strategy, leading to spiralling costs, misconfigured services, and security risks that could have been avoided.
In this blog, Dan Pudwell, Solutions Architect at Leighton, breaks down how to get the best out of AWS. He highlights some of the most common mistakes businesses make and shares practical tips for building a secure, cost-effective, and future-ready cloud environment.
A common error when it comes to security is using the root account for everyday operations. The root account has full control over all resources and using it daily creates a high-risk target for attackers. Overly permissive Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies are another frequent problem, where users or services are granted broad access instead of being assigned based on the principle of least privilege ensuring there is proper role-based access control in place.
Other mistakes include failing to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for IAM users, not rotating access keys regularly and underutilising AWS organisations or single sign-on (SSO) for multi-account management. These missteps leave environments vulnerable to accidental errors, insider threats, and external attackers.
AWS’ flexible pricing model, while great for ensuring elastic scalability as required, can lead to unexpected bills when not carefully managed. Organisations often leave unused resources running, particularly in development and test environments, or fail to implement proper tagging strategies and set up cost alerts which all make it hard to predict or track spending by a team or project. AWS also offers a number of ReservedInstance or Savings Plans which should be explored thoroughly in line with project scope.
Without active cost monitoring and governance, cloud spend can escalate quickly, sometimes without anyone noticing until the end of the month.
AWS allows businesses to build highly available and resilient systems, but poor design choices can undermine these benefits. Failure to design for high availability across multiple Availability Zones can leave your environment vulnerable to outages. Backup and disaster recovery strategies are also often an afterthought, rather than being integrated from the start.
Manual deployments instead of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like CloudFormation or Terraform can lead to inconsistencies, configuration drift, and longer troubleshooting times. These gaps reduce reliability and slow the ability to scale or innovate. Following AWS’ Well-Architected Framework principles or engaging a third-party to review your project in line with these at the very beginning can be hugely beneficial when it comes to ensuring the best possible outcomes.
Even well-designed AWS environments require visibility and operation discipline. Yet, centralised logging, alerting, and proper run books are often missing. Without these, small issues can escalate into major incidents. AWS Systems Manager is an underutilised tool that can centralise operations, streamline automation, and provide insight into the health of the environment, but many teams don’t fully leverage its capabilities.
Networking is another frequent area of misconfiguration. Leaving overly permissive security groups exposes systems unnecessarily. Equally not using Amazon Virtual Private Cloud correctly - for example using public subnets for private resources – can compromise security and overall control of applications. These errors not only create security risks, but can also complicate troubleshooting and compliance efforts.
For organisations in regulated industries, AWS offers compliance tools like AWS Organisations to support governance, ensure consistent policies around management and make audits simpler. Without the proper compliance control, audit trails and the correct documentation compliance can suffer. Companies can mitigate this by following AWS Config rules.
Many teams lack continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI and CD) pipelines to manage frequently merging code changes and automatically build, test and deploy code respectively. Implementing these along with proper testing strategies and version control practices can speed up delivery and decrease the risk of errors. Implementing modern DevOps practices ensures that changes are deployed reliably, quickly, and consistently across environments.
AWS environments are often under-optimised, despite data being central to business success. Mistakes include failing to encrypt data at rest or in transit, skipping backups, or neglecting lifecycle management policies. AWS provides robust tools like AWS Backup and built in encryption, but these need to be actively implemented to prevent loss or exposure.
Performance issues arise when autoscaling is underused, caching strategies are ignored, or content delivery is not optimised using services like CloudFront. By optimising their databases and employing proper caching strategies, companies can drastically improve performance.
Likewise, good resource management is key to success. Avoiding untagged resources, implementing proper resource cleanup and implementing proper resource limits by using tools such as AWS Resource Groups or implementing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for resource management companies can improve efficiency, as well as lower costs and operational complexity.
All of these challenges can often be mitigated with the right approach. Establishing a strong governance framework from the start, adhering to the AWS Well-Architected Framework, and using IaC to standardise deployments are foundational steps.
Centralised monitoring, logging, and operation documentation make it easier to detect and respond to issues. Cost management strategies such as tagging, reserved instances, saving plans and budgeting alters help control spend. By using AWS Systems Manager for operational management these things can be closely monitored and changed if required.
Compliance and security can be strengthened through proper use of tools such as AWS Organisations for multi-account management and AWS Config rules to support governance. As well as ensuring the proper backup and disaster recovery processes are in place.
Finally, by avoiding complexity by establishing repeatable practices and ensuring your cloud environment scales securely and efficiently as your businesses grows companies can ensure their environments maximise the full potential of AWS and meet business needs.
AWS is one of the most powerful platforms for scaling and modernising your business, offering endless opportunities to innovate faster, reduce costs and improve resilience.
However, too often, businesses jump in without a clearly defined strategy, leading to spiralling costs, misconfigured services, and security risks that could have been avoided.
In this blog, Dan Pudwell, Solutions Architect at Leighton, breaks down how to get the best out of AWS. He highlights some of the most common mistakes businesses make and shares practical tips for building a secure, cost-effective, and future-ready cloud environment.
A common error when it comes to security is using the root account for everyday operations. The root account has full control over all resources and using it daily creates a high-risk target for attackers. Overly permissive Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies are another frequent problem, where users or services are granted broad access instead of being assigned based on the principle of least privilege ensuring there is proper role-based access control in place.
Other mistakes include failing to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for IAM users, not rotating access keys regularly and underutilising AWS organisations or single sign-on (SSO) for multi-account management. These missteps leave environments vulnerable to accidental errors, insider threats, and external attackers.
AWS’ flexible pricing model, while great for ensuring elastic scalability as required, can lead to unexpected bills when not carefully managed. Organisations often leave unused resources running, particularly in development and test environments, or fail to implement proper tagging strategies and set up cost alerts which all make it hard to predict or track spending by a team or project. AWS also offers a number of ReservedInstance or Savings Plans which should be explored thoroughly in line with project scope.
Without active cost monitoring and governance, cloud spend can escalate quickly, sometimes without anyone noticing until the end of the month.
AWS allows businesses to build highly available and resilient systems, but poor design choices can undermine these benefits. Failure to design for high availability across multiple Availability Zones can leave your environment vulnerable to outages. Backup and disaster recovery strategies are also often an afterthought, rather than being integrated from the start.
Manual deployments instead of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like CloudFormation or Terraform can lead to inconsistencies, configuration drift, and longer troubleshooting times. These gaps reduce reliability and slow the ability to scale or innovate. Following AWS’ Well-Architected Framework principles or engaging a third-party to review your project in line with these at the very beginning can be hugely beneficial when it comes to ensuring the best possible outcomes.
Even well-designed AWS environments require visibility and operation discipline. Yet, centralised logging, alerting, and proper run books are often missing. Without these, small issues can escalate into major incidents. AWS Systems Manager is an underutilised tool that can centralise operations, streamline automation, and provide insight into the health of the environment, but many teams don’t fully leverage its capabilities.
Networking is another frequent area of misconfiguration. Leaving overly permissive security groups exposes systems unnecessarily. Equally not using Amazon Virtual Private Cloud correctly - for example using public subnets for private resources – can compromise security and overall control of applications. These errors not only create security risks, but can also complicate troubleshooting and compliance efforts.
For organisations in regulated industries, AWS offers compliance tools like AWS Organisations to support governance, ensure consistent policies around management and make audits simpler. Without the proper compliance control, audit trails and the correct documentation compliance can suffer. Companies can mitigate this by following AWS Config rules.
Many teams lack continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI and CD) pipelines to manage frequently merging code changes and automatically build, test and deploy code respectively. Implementing these along with proper testing strategies and version control practices can speed up delivery and decrease the risk of errors. Implementing modern DevOps practices ensures that changes are deployed reliably, quickly, and consistently across environments.
AWS environments are often under-optimised, despite data being central to business success. Mistakes include failing to encrypt data at rest or in transit, skipping backups, or neglecting lifecycle management policies. AWS provides robust tools like AWS Backup and built in encryption, but these need to be actively implemented to prevent loss or exposure.
Performance issues arise when autoscaling is underused, caching strategies are ignored, or content delivery is not optimised using services like CloudFront. By optimising their databases and employing proper caching strategies, companies can drastically improve performance.
Likewise, good resource management is key to success. Avoiding untagged resources, implementing proper resource cleanup and implementing proper resource limits by using tools such as AWS Resource Groups or implementing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for resource management companies can improve efficiency, as well as lower costs and operational complexity.
All of these challenges can often be mitigated with the right approach. Establishing a strong governance framework from the start, adhering to the AWS Well-Architected Framework, and using IaC to standardise deployments are foundational steps.
Centralised monitoring, logging, and operation documentation make it easier to detect and respond to issues. Cost management strategies such as tagging, reserved instances, saving plans and budgeting alters help control spend. By using AWS Systems Manager for operational management these things can be closely monitored and changed if required.
Compliance and security can be strengthened through proper use of tools such as AWS Organisations for multi-account management and AWS Config rules to support governance. As well as ensuring the proper backup and disaster recovery processes are in place.
Finally, by avoiding complexity by establishing repeatable practices and ensuring your cloud environment scales securely and efficiently as your businesses grows companies can ensure their environments maximise the full potential of AWS and meet business needs.
AWS is one of the most powerful platforms for scaling and modernising your business, offering endless opportunities to innovate faster, reduce costs and improve resilience.
However, too often, businesses jump in without a clearly defined strategy, leading to spiralling costs, misconfigured services, and security risks that could have been avoided.
In this blog, Dan Pudwell, Solutions Architect at Leighton, breaks down how to get the best out of AWS. He highlights some of the most common mistakes businesses make and shares practical tips for building a secure, cost-effective, and future-ready cloud environment.
A common error when it comes to security is using the root account for everyday operations. The root account has full control over all resources and using it daily creates a high-risk target for attackers. Overly permissive Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies are another frequent problem, where users or services are granted broad access instead of being assigned based on the principle of least privilege ensuring there is proper role-based access control in place.
Other mistakes include failing to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for IAM users, not rotating access keys regularly and underutilising AWS organisations or single sign-on (SSO) for multi-account management. These missteps leave environments vulnerable to accidental errors, insider threats, and external attackers.
AWS’ flexible pricing model, while great for ensuring elastic scalability as required, can lead to unexpected bills when not carefully managed. Organisations often leave unused resources running, particularly in development and test environments, or fail to implement proper tagging strategies and set up cost alerts which all make it hard to predict or track spending by a team or project. AWS also offers a number of ReservedInstance or Savings Plans which should be explored thoroughly in line with project scope.
Without active cost monitoring and governance, cloud spend can escalate quickly, sometimes without anyone noticing until the end of the month.
AWS allows businesses to build highly available and resilient systems, but poor design choices can undermine these benefits. Failure to design for high availability across multiple Availability Zones can leave your environment vulnerable to outages. Backup and disaster recovery strategies are also often an afterthought, rather than being integrated from the start.
Manual deployments instead of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like CloudFormation or Terraform can lead to inconsistencies, configuration drift, and longer troubleshooting times. These gaps reduce reliability and slow the ability to scale or innovate. Following AWS’ Well-Architected Framework principles or engaging a third-party to review your project in line with these at the very beginning can be hugely beneficial when it comes to ensuring the best possible outcomes.
Even well-designed AWS environments require visibility and operation discipline. Yet, centralised logging, alerting, and proper run books are often missing. Without these, small issues can escalate into major incidents. AWS Systems Manager is an underutilised tool that can centralise operations, streamline automation, and provide insight into the health of the environment, but many teams don’t fully leverage its capabilities.
Networking is another frequent area of misconfiguration. Leaving overly permissive security groups exposes systems unnecessarily. Equally not using Amazon Virtual Private Cloud correctly - for example using public subnets for private resources – can compromise security and overall control of applications. These errors not only create security risks, but can also complicate troubleshooting and compliance efforts.
For organisations in regulated industries, AWS offers compliance tools like AWS Organisations to support governance, ensure consistent policies around management and make audits simpler. Without the proper compliance control, audit trails and the correct documentation compliance can suffer. Companies can mitigate this by following AWS Config rules.
Many teams lack continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI and CD) pipelines to manage frequently merging code changes and automatically build, test and deploy code respectively. Implementing these along with proper testing strategies and version control practices can speed up delivery and decrease the risk of errors. Implementing modern DevOps practices ensures that changes are deployed reliably, quickly, and consistently across environments.
AWS environments are often under-optimised, despite data being central to business success. Mistakes include failing to encrypt data at rest or in transit, skipping backups, or neglecting lifecycle management policies. AWS provides robust tools like AWS Backup and built in encryption, but these need to be actively implemented to prevent loss or exposure.
Performance issues arise when autoscaling is underused, caching strategies are ignored, or content delivery is not optimised using services like CloudFront. By optimising their databases and employing proper caching strategies, companies can drastically improve performance.
Likewise, good resource management is key to success. Avoiding untagged resources, implementing proper resource cleanup and implementing proper resource limits by using tools such as AWS Resource Groups or implementing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for resource management companies can improve efficiency, as well as lower costs and operational complexity.
All of these challenges can often be mitigated with the right approach. Establishing a strong governance framework from the start, adhering to the AWS Well-Architected Framework, and using IaC to standardise deployments are foundational steps.
Centralised monitoring, logging, and operation documentation make it easier to detect and respond to issues. Cost management strategies such as tagging, reserved instances, saving plans and budgeting alters help control spend. By using AWS Systems Manager for operational management these things can be closely monitored and changed if required.
Compliance and security can be strengthened through proper use of tools such as AWS Organisations for multi-account management and AWS Config rules to support governance. As well as ensuring the proper backup and disaster recovery processes are in place.
Finally, by avoiding complexity by establishing repeatable practices and ensuring your cloud environment scales securely and efficiently as your businesses grows companies can ensure their environments maximise the full potential of AWS and meet business needs.
AWS is one of the most powerful platforms for scaling and modernising your business, offering endless opportunities to innovate faster, reduce costs and improve resilience.
However, too often, businesses jump in without a clearly defined strategy, leading to spiralling costs, misconfigured services, and security risks that could have been avoided.
In this blog, Dan Pudwell, Solutions Architect at Leighton, breaks down how to get the best out of AWS. He highlights some of the most common mistakes businesses make and shares practical tips for building a secure, cost-effective, and future-ready cloud environment.
A common error when it comes to security is using the root account for everyday operations. The root account has full control over all resources and using it daily creates a high-risk target for attackers. Overly permissive Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies are another frequent problem, where users or services are granted broad access instead of being assigned based on the principle of least privilege ensuring there is proper role-based access control in place.
Other mistakes include failing to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for IAM users, not rotating access keys regularly and underutilising AWS organisations or single sign-on (SSO) for multi-account management. These missteps leave environments vulnerable to accidental errors, insider threats, and external attackers.
AWS’ flexible pricing model, while great for ensuring elastic scalability as required, can lead to unexpected bills when not carefully managed. Organisations often leave unused resources running, particularly in development and test environments, or fail to implement proper tagging strategies and set up cost alerts which all make it hard to predict or track spending by a team or project. AWS also offers a number of ReservedInstance or Savings Plans which should be explored thoroughly in line with project scope.
Without active cost monitoring and governance, cloud spend can escalate quickly, sometimes without anyone noticing until the end of the month.
AWS allows businesses to build highly available and resilient systems, but poor design choices can undermine these benefits. Failure to design for high availability across multiple Availability Zones can leave your environment vulnerable to outages. Backup and disaster recovery strategies are also often an afterthought, rather than being integrated from the start.
Manual deployments instead of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like CloudFormation or Terraform can lead to inconsistencies, configuration drift, and longer troubleshooting times. These gaps reduce reliability and slow the ability to scale or innovate. Following AWS’ Well-Architected Framework principles or engaging a third-party to review your project in line with these at the very beginning can be hugely beneficial when it comes to ensuring the best possible outcomes.
Even well-designed AWS environments require visibility and operation discipline. Yet, centralised logging, alerting, and proper run books are often missing. Without these, small issues can escalate into major incidents. AWS Systems Manager is an underutilised tool that can centralise operations, streamline automation, and provide insight into the health of the environment, but many teams don’t fully leverage its capabilities.
Networking is another frequent area of misconfiguration. Leaving overly permissive security groups exposes systems unnecessarily. Equally not using Amazon Virtual Private Cloud correctly - for example using public subnets for private resources – can compromise security and overall control of applications. These errors not only create security risks, but can also complicate troubleshooting and compliance efforts.
For organisations in regulated industries, AWS offers compliance tools like AWS Organisations to support governance, ensure consistent policies around management and make audits simpler. Without the proper compliance control, audit trails and the correct documentation compliance can suffer. Companies can mitigate this by following AWS Config rules.
Many teams lack continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI and CD) pipelines to manage frequently merging code changes and automatically build, test and deploy code respectively. Implementing these along with proper testing strategies and version control practices can speed up delivery and decrease the risk of errors. Implementing modern DevOps practices ensures that changes are deployed reliably, quickly, and consistently across environments.
AWS environments are often under-optimised, despite data being central to business success. Mistakes include failing to encrypt data at rest or in transit, skipping backups, or neglecting lifecycle management policies. AWS provides robust tools like AWS Backup and built in encryption, but these need to be actively implemented to prevent loss or exposure.
Performance issues arise when autoscaling is underused, caching strategies are ignored, or content delivery is not optimised using services like CloudFront. By optimising their databases and employing proper caching strategies, companies can drastically improve performance.
Likewise, good resource management is key to success. Avoiding untagged resources, implementing proper resource cleanup and implementing proper resource limits by using tools such as AWS Resource Groups or implementing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for resource management companies can improve efficiency, as well as lower costs and operational complexity.
All of these challenges can often be mitigated with the right approach. Establishing a strong governance framework from the start, adhering to the AWS Well-Architected Framework, and using IaC to standardise deployments are foundational steps.
Centralised monitoring, logging, and operation documentation make it easier to detect and respond to issues. Cost management strategies such as tagging, reserved instances, saving plans and budgeting alters help control spend. By using AWS Systems Manager for operational management these things can be closely monitored and changed if required.
Compliance and security can be strengthened through proper use of tools such as AWS Organisations for multi-account management and AWS Config rules to support governance. As well as ensuring the proper backup and disaster recovery processes are in place.
Finally, by avoiding complexity by establishing repeatable practices and ensuring your cloud environment scales securely and efficiently as your businesses grows companies can ensure their environments maximise the full potential of AWS and meet business needs.
