24/7 security operations and secure cloud migration for two federal government agencies
Two federal agencies needed round-the-clock security monitoring, support for classified communications, and a migration to cloud that would satisfy their compliance regime — without interrupting services citizens depend on.
The challenge
Legacy on-premise systems were expensive to secure and slow to change, security monitoring was business-hours only, and the agencies' compliance frameworks required documented controls, continuous monitoring and an authorisation boundary that could be audited. Any migration had to keep classified communications channels operating throughout.
The approach
- Assesscontrols, gaps, boundary
- Designzero-trust landing zone
- Monitor24/7 SOC live first
- Migratein waves, no downtime
- Operatecontinuous compliance
- Stand up the SOC before moving anything. 24/7 monitoring with SIEM/EDR coverage, playbooks and escalation paths — so the migration itself was watched from day one.
- Design the landing zone around the compliance boundary. Zero-trust network segmentation, least-privilege identity, encryption and centralised logging mapped control-by-control to the agencies' framework.
- Migrate in waves. Non-critical workloads first, then core systems, each with rollback plans and change windows agreed with service owners; classified communications support ran in parallel throughout.
- Make compliance continuous. Automated evidence collection and control monitoring replaced the annual scramble for audit documents.
What we built
- 24/7 security operations centre with continuous monitoring and incident playbooks
- Secure cloud landing zone designed to the agencies' compliance frameworks
- Wave-based migration with infrastructure as code and rollback plans
- Classified communications support and continuous compliance evidence
Results
- Security coverage moved from business hours to 24/7 across both agencies
- Migration completed without unplanned downtime to citizen-facing services
- Compliance evidence collected continuously rather than reconstructed at audit time
- A documented authorisation boundary the agencies' assessors could review
What made it work
Monitor first, migrate second
Having the SOC live before the first workload moved turned the migration into a watched, low-drama exercise.
Map every control
Writing the landing zone to the compliance framework up front removed months of audit back-and-forth.
Waves, not big bangs
Service owners agreed change windows per wave, which is why nothing citizen-facing went down.
Government and enterprise programmes are described under confidentiality agreements; client identities, figures and architectures are generalised where required. Marketing results are reported as the clients described them.