Plaza Premium Group strengthens 24/7 cloud operations with AWS

Plaza Premium delivers digital and operational platforms for airlines, airport authorities, and airport hospitality operations requiring continuous availability. As the business expanded across geographies and service lines, its infrastructure team needed a single operating approach to support teams across time zones while meeting security, compliance, and availability requirements.

At the same time, the company's cloud footprint continued to grow across regions and accounts. Relying on multiple third-party providers to support AWS environments made it difficult to maintain consistent operational standards, adopt new AWS services and features as they were released, and scale skilled resources in line with business demand. The team also lacked a structured approach to proactively identify and remediate security risks before they became incidents.

To support expansion without increasing operational complexity, Plaza Premium sought an operating model that clarified ownership, reduced day-to-day platform overhead, and embedded proactive security guidance into its cloud operations. "We want our internal team focused on business-oriented IT service management while relying on AWS experts to operate and maintain the underlying AWS technology—and to guide us on where to invest in security improvements," says Keith So, global director, IT Infrastructure and Information Security, Plaza Premium Group.

To improve operational consistency across its AWS environment, Plaza Premium combined strategic guidance from AWS Enterprise Support with the managed operational capabilities of AMS.

Through AWS Enterprise Support, Plaza Premium gained access to a dedicated TAM who worked with its infrastructure and security teams. The TAM led a structured cybersecurity improvement program, starting with an AWS Shield Advanced review and resource inventory across Plaza Premium's accounts. This assessment reviewed AWS Shield Advanced capabilities, including Layer 7 DDoS protection, AWS Web Application Firewall (AWS WAF) coverage, and monitoring automation—creating a prioritized cybersecurity roadmap for Plaza Premium.

The TAM also guided Plaza Premium through the adoption of AWS Incident Detection and Response (IDR) and AWS Security Incident Response (SIR), helping the team define workload scope and escalation paths. To strengthen AWS WAF protections, the AWS Enterprise Support team provided a step-by-step rate-limiting approach—observing traffic patterns, setting thresholds, then enforcing controls—to reduce the risk of blocking legitimate traffic during implementation.

AMS assessed existing procedures and worked with Plaza Premium to implement customer-approved improvements through documented action plans and defined change and rollback processes, supporting controlled execution at scale. The team also strengthened day-to-day operations by expanding resource tagging, refining AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies, automating patching routines, and improving backup processes. For security operations, AMS and SIR provided structured security reporting, while SIR introduced dashboard-based scoring capabilities that enabled teams to review security posture, prioritize remediation work, and track improvements over time.

To further support infrastructure and security operations, engineers integrated Amazon Q Developer into operational workflows to reduce manual product knowledge research, assess incident context, and validate troubleshooting directions. Plaza Premium also introduced a chatbot workflow that converts operational questions and incident details into tickets, supporting response workflows when engineers are away from the console.

Across these workflows, Plaza Premium adopted Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring and alerting, AWS Transit Gateway to manage connectivity across AWS environments, and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) for application storage.

This operating model strengthened Plaza Premium’s ability to scale infrastructure and security support, adding both proactive guidance and operational capacity without increasing vendor complexity. "AWS Enterprise Support and AWS Managed Services act as an extension of our resources, supporting infrastructure and security teams with both strategic direction and hands-on execution," says So. 

Plaza Premium established 24/7 incident detection and response coverage across its environments, enabling earlier threat detection and clearer ownership across airport and aviation platforms.

Troubleshooting is now 20 percent faster, reducing manual investigation time and improving consistency in incident analysis and resolution across time zones. Engineers also use AI-assisted workflows to support investigations and validate troubleshooting paths.

The cybersecurity improvement program, driven through AWS Enterprise Support, gave the team a structured path from assessment to remediation—shifting from reactive patching to a more proactive security posture. As part of this coordinated effort, Plaza Premium completed AWS Shield Advanced reviews, AWS WAF hardening, and IDR/SIR onboarding as connected initiatives rather than isolated projects.

As processes became more standardized, governance improved in parallel. Plaza Premium tagged more than 8,000 AWS resources 30 percent faster, creating a stronger baseline for cost analysis, accountability, and ongoing optimization. The team also achieved backup success rates of 99 percent.

Together, these improvements reduced the volume of escalations reaching leadership, allowing teams to focus more on planning and service growth. "With AWS Enterprise Support guiding our security strategy and AWS Managed Services handling day-to-day operations, we've reduced operational alerts and can focus on strategy development and identifying new business opportunities," says So.