Deployment Guide: Securing AWS with SGNL

Eliminate Standing Access and secure AWS in real-time

The problem: too much access, too often

Modern cloud environments move fast. Engineers are on call 24/7. Incidents escalate in minutes. But access controls in AWS haven’t kept up.

Organizations still grant standing access to production systems, including persistent IAM roles, blanket privileges, and long-lived credentials. That leaves an open door for misuse, mistakes, and identity-based attacks.

Even when processes exist to limit that access—like requiring a ticket or checking on-call schedules—they’re usually manual. The result? Delays, audit gaps, and privileged users with more access than they need, for longer than necessary.

Why legacy solutions fall short

You’ve probably invested in tools like:

• Okta or another identity provider
• ServiceNow or your ITSM of choice
• PagerDuty or another alerting/on-call platform
• Crowdstrike or another endpoint detection and response platform
• And of course, AWS IAM, with all its complexity

But these systems aren’t coordinated. Access is granted upfront, often without context, and rarely revoked at the right time. PAM tools may reduce credential sprawl, but they still rely on pre-assigned roles and delayed revocation.

What you really need is continuous access control, a way to decide, at the moment of access, whether it should be granted. That means:

• Checking who the user is
• Confirming why they need access
• Evaluating when and how they’re requesting it
• Ensuring everything checks out

SGNL: Continuous Identity

SGNL enforces Zero Standing Privilege (ZSP) in AWS by serving as the decision layer between identity signals and cloud access. Instead of assigning static IAM roles, SGNL grants access only when justified—and revokes that access automatically when context changes.

With SGNL:

• Access is contextual – only granted when all conditions are met (e.g., valid ticket, on-call status, compliant device)
• Access is ephemeral – revoked immediately when it’s no longer justified
• Access is auditable – every decision is logged, with full context and policy

What success looks like

A typical SGNL-secured AWS deployment results in:

• Zero Standing Privilege – no persistent access to production environments
• Fewer IAM role and permission assignments – reduced from tens of thousands to a handful of reusable policies
• Faster incident response – on-call engineers get access instantly, without juggling tickets
• Stronger audits – access decisions are always backed by contextual data and policies
• Streamlined governance – security and engineering teams can collaborate and align on shared policy goals

What you’ll need

Most organizations start with these systems:

Don’t have one of these? SGNL’s integrations are flexible—ask us what’s supported.

How it works at a glance

Let’s say an engineer is paged to respond to a production incident.

1. They’re assigned a ServiceNow ticket

2. SGNL evaluates the situation:

   • Are they part of the SRE group in Okta?
   • Is the ticket active and assigned to them?
   • Are they currently on-call in PagerDuty?
   • Are they using a compliant device?

3. If all conditions are met, SGNL authorizes just-in-time access to the specific AWS account and role.

4. Access is revoked automatically when the context no longer holds—e.g., when the ticket closes, a shift ends, or the device is non-compliant.

   Want more detail? Learn how SGNL Policy evaluates condition, and CAEP Hub continuously monitors and manages sessions

SGNL components involved

Each of these has its own integration steps—see the product documentation for configuration details.

Key deployment steps (overview)

If you’re already using Okta and AWS, simply follow the steps below to get going. If you’re using a different Identity Provider, or Cloud Service Provider, your steps may vary.

1. Connect your IdP and cloud environment

   • Integrate SGNL with Okta and AWS IAM or AWS Identity Center

2. Ingest business context

   • Connect to your Systems of Record, including
     1. ServiceNow
     2. PagerDuty
     3. Crowdstrike
   • Extend and customize SGNL’s default integrations to coalesce data and retrieve custom signals/context from your Systems

3. Author access policies

   • Using Snippet templates or custom snippets, define access conditions in SGNL (e.g., open ticket + on-call + compliant device)
   • Use Snippets as building-blocks to create your Policies

4. Enforce Access

   • Configure Okta Inline Hooks with SGNL Provider Hooks
   • Define CAEP Hub Triggers, Rules, and Actions to orchestrate AWS Session Management

5. Monitor and refine

   • Review access decision logs
   • Iterate on policies to balance access and security

Need implementation detail? Start with the AWS IAM Configuration Guide or AWS Identity Center Configuration Guide

You’re not alone

SGNL deployments can be incremental. You don’t need to rip and replace anything. Start with one AWS account or a limited use case, and expand from there.

Whether you’re securing production environments, reducing IAM role sprawl, or proving ZSP in your next audit, SGNL helps you get there without slowing your teams down.

Want to learn more? Get in touch or explore our full documentation.