Enterprise Architecture Review

Overview

Every technology decision carries security consequences, but those decisions rarely get made in one place. A cloud migration here, a new SaaS platform there, an integration bolted on to close a sales deal. Each one might pass its own review. What gets missed is how they interact: where trust boundaries actually sit once everything is connected, where identity sprawls across systems, where one team’s workaround becomes the whole organisation’s exposure.

Opcode’s Enterprise Architecture Review looks at your technology estate as a whole, not one system in isolation, and evaluates it through a security and risk lens: what’s been built, how the pieces connect, and where architectural decisions are quietly accumulating risk.

This isn’t a generic IT architecture audit. It’s a security-led review of the architecture decisions that matter most: identity, data, network, and integration, delivered by a practitioner who has had to live with the consequences of getting them wrong.

What’s included

• Estate-wide architecture review: Assessment of how your systems, platforms, and environments fit together, not just how each one is configured individually.
• Threat modelling: Structured identification of threats, trust boundaries, and risk scenarios that span multiple systems and teams.
• Identity and access architecture: Review of how identity is managed and trusted across the estate, including where it sprawls, duplicates, or creates privilege escalation paths between systems.
• Data flow and protection architecture: Mapping of where sensitive data lives, how it moves between systems, and whether protection travels with it.
• Reference architectures: Documented, reusable patterns for identity and access, network segmentation, data protection, logging and monitoring, and system integration.
• Cloud security design: AWS, Azure, and GCP security architecture patterns, including IAM strategy, network design, encryption at rest and in transit, and secrets management.
• Design review: Review of proposed changes before implementation, so gaps are caught while they’re still cheap to fix.

How it works

1. Discovery: Opcode reviews existing architecture documentation across your systems, interviews technical stakeholders from each major platform, and understands your business context and risk appetite.
2. Assessment: Current-state analysis across the estate, not just individual systems, against relevant frameworks and threat models. Gaps and cross-system risks are identified and prioritised.
3. Design: Target-state architecture developed collaboratively with your team, with clear documentation and rationale for each decision.
4. Handover: Deliverables include architecture documentation, threat model outputs, a prioritised roadmap, and implementation guidance.

Who this is for

• Organisations planning a major platform change (cloud migration, core system replacement, M&A integration) who want security designed in from the start
• CTOs and CIOs who need an independent view of how architecture decisions made by different teams add up to organisational risk
• Organisations whose technology estate has grown organically and want a target-state design before scaling further
• Engineering and platform teams that want proposed designs reviewed before they’re built

Relevant frameworks

• NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF)
• ISO 27001 / 27002
• CIS Controls
• AWS Well-Architected Framework (Security Pillar)