UStronics Inc. Migrates Satellite Communications Infrastructure to AWS GovCloud

About UStronics Inc.

UStronics Inc. is a satellite and mobile communications company providing connectivity solutions for voice, data, SMS, tracking, and IoT applications globally. The company serves government agencies, defense organizations, maritime clients, and enterprise customers who require secure, reliable communications in environments where conventional networks are unavailable or unreliable.

UStronics partners with major satellite operators including Iridium and Inmarsat, offering subscription-based services across VSAT, portable terminals, satellite PTT, and IoT connectivity platforms.

The Challenge

UStronics Inc. needed to modernize its infrastructure to meet the security and compliance requirements of its government and defense clients:

• Legacy on-premises infrastructure that was expensive to maintain and difficult to scale for growing satellite communications workloads
• Government clients requiring FedRAMP, ITAR, and NIST 800-53 compliance for communications data and telemetry
• Need for data sovereignty and isolation to handle sensitive government satellite communications
• Limited scalability for IoT device management and real-time tracking across global satellite networks
• Aging monitoring and alerting systems that lacked the observability needed for mission-critical communications

The Solution

Tactical Edge designed and executed a migration and modernization program on AWS GovCloud (US), providing the data sovereignty, compliance controls, and isolation required for government and defense workloads.

The migration followed AWS Well-Architected best practices across all six pillars, with particular emphasis on the Security and Reliability pillars given the mission-critical nature of satellite communications.

Infrastructure Migration

• Migrated core satellite management and telemetry workloads to Amazon EC2 within AWS GovCloud, with Auto Scaling for variable communications load
• Moved data storage to Amazon S3 with server-side encryption (SSE-KMS) and versioning for communications logs and telemetry archives
• Deployed Amazon RDS for structured data with Multi-AZ for high availability and automated backups

Security and Compliance

• AWS GovCloud (US-West) for FedRAMP High and ITAR compliance with dedicated, isolated infrastructure
• AWS KMS for encryption key management, AWS CloudTrail for audit logging, AWS Config for continuous compliance monitoring
• Amazon GuardDuty for threat detection, AWS Security Hub for centralized security posture, AWS WAF for application-layer protection
• VPC isolation with private subnets, NACLs, and security groups aligned to NIST 800-53 controls

Monitoring and Operations

• Amazon CloudWatch for infrastructure and application monitoring with custom metrics for satellite link health
• Amazon SNS for alerting and incident notification across operations teams
• AWS Systems Manager for patch management, configuration compliance, and operational runbooks
• AWS Backup for automated, policy-driven backup and disaster recovery

Results

• Successfully migrated satellite communications workloads to AWS GovCloud with zero data loss during cutover
• Achieved FedRAMP High and ITAR compliance, enabling UStronics Inc. to serve government and defense clients with full data sovereignty
• AWS Well-Architected review completed with 0 high-risk issues across all six pillars
• Improved operational visibility with centralized monitoring, automated alerting, and compliance dashboards

Why It Matters

For companies serving government and defense clients, infrastructure decisions have compliance and national security implications. UStronics Inc. needed a partner who understood both the technical migration and the regulatory landscape.

AWS GovCloud provides the isolation, compliance certifications, and data sovereignty that government communications require. The Well-Architected approach ensures the environment is not just compliant, but operationally excellent.