Bastion Host (Jump Box) on AWS - Supported by CloudSOE

This product has charges associated with it for seller support. Deploy a hardened bastion host, also known as a jump box or jump host, as the single audited entry point into your AWS VPC. Built for platform teams, MSPs and security conscious administrators who need controlled SSH access to private instances for staff, third party contractors and tooling, with every session logged and every account managed through a defined lifecycle. This image ships CIS aligned base OS with an opinionated OpenSSH configuration, optional TOTP multi factor authentication and session auditing enabled from first boot.

Bastion or jump box: same job, done properly

Whatever your team calls it, the requirements are the same: one hardened host that faces the network edge so nothing else has to, strong authentication, complete session records, and easy onboarding and offboarding of the people who use it. Most teams assemble this by hand on a stock AMI and drift accumulates from day one. This image starts at the finished state and keeps itself patched.

Third party contractors and vendors who need access but should not have IAM identities in your account Compliance frameworks and auditors that require a designated jump host with session records in a form you control Hybrid and multi target access: tunnelling to RDS, ElastiCache, on premises hosts over VPN or Direct Connect, and non EC2 destinations SSM cannot reach SFTP and SCP file transfer through a controlled, logged channel Multi cloud and MSP operations where one consistent access pattern beats per platform tooling

What you get out of the box

• CIS aligned base OS hardening with an opinionated sshd configuration: key only authentication, root login disabled, modern ciphers and MACs only, strict forwarding controls
• fail2ban tuned for SSH with sensible ban policies; UFW allowing only SSH
• Login banners for legal notice requirements, editable for your jurisdiction
• No listening services except SSH: no web panel, no agents, minimal attack surface by design

Common use cases

• Single audited door: administrators reach private EC2, RDS and container hosts through one logged channel = Contractor access: time boxed accounts with expiry, MFA and full session records
• Compliance evidence: session logs and access records in your S3 bucket(optional), in formats auditors accept
• Database tunnelling: controlled port forwarding to RDS and ElastiCache without exposing endpoints
• MSP operations: one bastion per client VPC, deployed identically from this AMI

Sizing guidance

Bastions are light. t3.micro suits most teams; t3.small when session recording is enabled with many concurrent users.