What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is a cloud computing and data storage architecture and service provided by Amazon.

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AWS is widely used and is a key infrastructure component of today's cyber-world, powering much of the technology economy.

It thus represents a key fulcrum in the establishment and maintenance of information security at many organizations.

AWS launched in 2006 with the radical idea that companies shouldn't need to build and maintain their own server infrastructure. Amazon had already solved massive scaling problems for its retail business, and it realized these same capabilities could be rented to others. The service started with just a few offerings—simple storage and virtual computing—but it fundamentally changed how organizations thought about IT infrastructure.

Before AWS, companies bought servers, installed them in data centers, and hoped they'd guessed capacity needs correctly. AWS introduced the possibility of spinning up resources in minutes and paying only for what you used. This shift from capital expenditure to operational expenditure transformed not just technology deployment but also security models.

The shared responsibility framework emerged, where AWS secured the infrastructure while customers secured what they put on it. Over time, AWS expanded to hundreds of services, from databases to machine learning tools, becoming the dominant force in cloud computing and setting patterns that other providers would follow.

AWS powers a staggering portion of the internet, which means security failures there ripple across the entire economy. A misconfigured S3 bucket can expose millions of customer records. Compromised credentials can give attackers access to entire cloud environments.

The shared responsibility model sounds simple until organizations realize they're accountable for identity management, data encryption, network controls, and application security—all in an environment where resources can be created or modified with a few API calls. The complexity creates risk.

Companies struggle with visibility across multiple AWS accounts, services that multiply faster than security teams can assess them, and configurations that drift from secure baselines. Multi-cloud strategies add another layer, as organizations try to maintain consistent security across AWS and competing platforms. The elasticity and speed that make AWS powerful also make it dangerous when security isn't built in from the start.

Getting AWS security right requires understanding both the platform's specific tools and broader cloud security principles.

Plurilock brings deep AWS security expertise from former intelligence professionals and practitioners who've secured complex cloud environments at scale. We don't just audit your AWS setup—we implement practical controls that work with your actual workflows.

Our cloud visibility services help you understand what's actually running in your AWS environment, identify misconfigurations before they become breaches, and establish guardrails that prevent security drift.

We can mobilize in days rather than weeks, working alongside your teams to secure AWS deployments without slowing down your business.