Client Background
Pole Star Global is a maritime intelligence provider, delivering advanced technologies that help organisations monitor vessel movements, manage regulatory compliance, and protect critical maritime infrastructure.
Challenge
Pole Star Global needed a governed data platform with fine-grained access control for multiple internal user groups. While not bound by specific compliance mandates, the company understood the high stakes of operational integrity and customer trust. Without strong controls, there was a real risk of data exposure, unauthorised access, or reputational damage due to misconfigurations or internal policy breaches.
The solution had to balance scalability, agility, and security—embedding best practices without slowing innovation or delaying analytics delivery. A key requirement was delivering the platform entirely as Infrastructure-as- Code, ensuring a repeatable, scalable deployment model. This would allow Pole Star to seamlessly migrate both existing and future datasets onto an enhanced version of the platform, while maintaining robust data security controls and fine-grained access permissions.
Approach
The engagement was structured around two interrelated workstreams, delivered sequentially. The first focused on application and platform security, culminating in the deployment of an Enhanced Landing Zone (ELZ) in December 2024. This established a secure, best-practice-aligned AWS foundation—covering identity management, network boundaries, and threat monitoring.
Building on this foundation, the second workstream—delivered from January 2025—enabled the data platform, providing a secure, scalable analytics environment governed by fine-grained access controls and designed to support Pole Star’s growing data needs.
Solution
At the core of the solution was Cloudscaler’s Enhanced Landing Zone (ELZ), which provided the secure cloud foundation for Pole Star’s platform. Designed to complement AWS’s Landing Zone Accelerator, Cloudscaler’s ELZ delivers essential security, networking, and compliance features out of the box—accelerating time-to-value and de-risking delivery. For organisations with complex governance needs, such as Pole Star, it established a robust starting point and a faster path to maturity. The ELZ enabled the team to build with confidence from day one, knowing that critical guardrails and best-practice controls were already in place.
With this foundation, Cloudscaler implemented a robust identity and access management model using AWS IAM Identity Center. Access was centralised across the organisation, with job-based permission sets, short-lived credentials, and enforced multi-factor authentication. IAM Access Analyzer was employed to detect potential misconfigurations, while all policies and roles were defined using source-controlled YAML configurations and deployed via the ELZ’s CI/CD pipeline—ensuring consistency, auditability, and alignment with GitOps principles.
Following the successful deployment of the ELZ, Cloudscaler delivered a secure, governed data platform to support Pole Star’s analytics use cases. Architected around a medallion-structured, AWS Lake Formation–enabled data lake, the platform used dedicated S3 buckets for ingest, staging, and production data. AWS Glue Crawlers automated data discovery and cataloguing across the lake, enabling seamless metadata management. AWS Lake Formation then applied fine-grained, role-based access controls from the catalogue—integrated with IAM Identity Center for secure, compliant data access without impeding innovation.
The result was a highly scalable, governed analytics platform that enforced data residency, maintained full auditability, and accelerated time-to-insight—without compromising control.
Outcomes
The solution delivered by Cloudscaler enabled Pole Star to accelerate secure development and governance across its cloud platform. By building on the ELZ, the team reduced setup time and risk while establishing strong foundational security from the outset. Developers now operate within secure, well-defined boundaries, deploying services via Infrastructure-as-Code with automated compliance checks and enforced guardrails—minimising the need for manual oversight and rework.
On the data side, Pole Star Global’s teams can now access trusted, well-governed data in real time. The Lake Formation–enabled platform ensures access is restricted to authorised users, with roles aligned to organisational responsibilities. Reporting and analytics are now faster and more reliable, with QuickSight dashboards operating securely on top of governed datasets. The entire environment is managed through Terraform, ensuring that future changes are predictable, testable, and compliant with best practices.
Value Delivered
For Pole Star, building trust with clients depends on demonstrating security and control without introducing friction into operations. This project delivered both. By embedding governance into the platform’s foundations—from access and architecture to data and analytics—Cloudscaler enabled Pole Star to scale securely, operate efficiently, and respond confidently to client expectations. The engagement stands as a clear example of how cloud-native solutions, when delivered with care and precision, can power innovation while reducing risk.
“This wasn’t just about building a secure cloud — it was about enabling Pole Star to move faster with confidence. By starting from our Enhanced Landing Zone and layering in automated controls, fine-grained identity, and governed analytics, we helped Pole Star turn cloud security into a strategic enabler. This is what modern, high-trust platforms should look like.” — Andy Astley, CTO, Cloudscaler
