AWS Security Checklist: 58 Checks Every Team Should Run Before a SOC 2 Audit

I Got Tired of $10k AWS Security Audits — So I Built My Own A few months ago I was helping a startup prepare for SOC 2. Their security consultant quoted $15,000 for an AWS security audit — two weeks timeline and a PDF report at the end. I looked at what they were actually checking — IAM configs, open security groups, unencrypted S3 buckets, CloudTrail logging. Standard stuff that any engineer could verify. Nothing that justified $15,000 and two weeks. So I spent a few weekends building it myself