Success Story · Legal Tech & Real Estate

From Fragmented Infrastructure
to Scalable Security

How Elevate helped a global e-signature platform overhaul its cloud infrastructure, close 380+ high-risk security vulnerabilities, and cut AWS costs by a third, all in under 90 days, positioning the company for acquisition by a national leader in real estate.

Client Global E-Signature Platform (confidential)
Industry Remote Online Notarization · Real Estate · Legal · Finance
Engagement DevSecOps & Cloud Infrastructure Transformation
Timeline < 90 days
Key Result Acquired by a national leader in real estate

The Client turned to Elevate to overhaul their cloud infrastructure and modernize their DevSecOps practices. What began as a platform riddled with instability, inefficiencies, and security risks is now a scalable, secure environment with reduced costs and clear oversight. Elevate delivered measurable outcomes in under 90 days, functioning as a true partner and embedded member of the Client’s engineering team. The success of this transformation contributed to the company’s eventual acquisition by a national leader in real estate.

01 : Background

A platform that scaled faster than its infrastructure could keep up with

The Client is a globally recognized provider of remote online notarization and e-signature services. Their mission is to simplify and secure the online notarization process for industries like real estate, law, and finance. In a field where compliance and availability are non-negotiable, they needed technical infrastructure that could scale with demand and security expectations.

Over time, the platform evolved in a fast-paced, startup environment. Different contributors came and went, leaving behind a patchwork of infrastructure and fragmented systems. As the platform scaled, it grew to include five separate codebases and ten environments, but no one team maintained full ownership. Documentation was inconsistent, and teams struggled to ensure reliability, security, and operational efficiency.

With mounting complexity and rising expectations from enterprise partners, the Client recognized they needed help bringing order to the chaos. That’s when they brought in Elevate.

Remote Online Notarization E-Signature Legal Tech Real Estate DevSecOps Cloud Security
5 + 10
Separate codebases and environments unified under clear ownership.

Platform at a Glance

Codebases 5
Environments 10
Industries Served Real Estate · Law · Finance
Engagement Embedded Partner
02 : The Challenge

Five things the Client was wrestling with before Elevate stepped in

At this point in their journey, the Client didn’t just need technical support. They needed a partner who could make sense of the complexity, provide a clear path forward, and operate with transparency and trust. We specialize in stepping into fast-moving environments with fragmented infrastructure and unclear ownership, quickly assessing what’s in place, identifying gaps, and building alignment around what matters most, while keeping the project moving forward.

With deep experience across regulated industries like legal tech, finance, and real estate, we understood the importance of balancing speed with security, and innovation with compliance.

01

Brittle, inconsistent infrastructure

A patchwork of systems assembled by rotating contributors. No single team owned the full picture, and documentation hadn’t kept up with the platform’s growth.

02

No centralized security practices or tooling

Security decisions were scattered across teams and repositories. There was no shared standard for secrets management, IAM, or policy enforcement.

03

Cloud cost overruns and resource sprawl

AWS spend had grown unpredictably as environments multiplied. Without a reliable way to account for usage, costs kept climbing while value stayed flat.

04

380+ unresolved high-severity security vulnerabilities

The backlog of known risks had grown past what the internal team could work through, a significant concern for a platform trusted with legally binding documents.

05

No defined disaster recovery or redundancy plan

A platform serving regulated workflows in 40+ countries with no documented failover strategy is a risk the Client could no longer carry into enterprise partnerships.

03 : Our Solution & Implementation

A holistic DevSecOps transformation, chosen to balance scalability, security, and speed

Elevate replaced legacy EC2-based hosting with containerized workloads in Kubernetes. This shift enabled dynamic scaling and reduced failure rates. Terraform allowed reproducible infrastructure changes. Security remediations included encrypted secrets handling, IAM refinements, and deployment hardening. We also enabled regional failover capabilities for disaster resilience.

Each element of the solution was selected to simplify management, reduce risk, and support the demands of a modern, cloud-native platform.

Terraform
Infrastructure-as-code for AWS
Kubernetes (EKS)
Horizontal scalability
Docker
Containerized workloads
AWS
EKS, S3, EFS, IAM, Cost Explorer
Node.js
Backend services
Angular
Web application frontend
MongoDB Atlas
Managed database scalability
Security Layer
Secrets, IAM, policy enforcement

The DevSecOps transformation, step by step

01
Provision with Terraform
Infrastructure-as-code replaced ad-hoc console changes with reproducible, reviewable AWS provisioning.
02
Containerize into EKS
Legacy EC2 hosting gave way to Kubernetes clusters, enabling dynamic scaling and reducing failure rates.
03
Harden security
Encrypted secrets handling, refined IAM, and deployment hardening closed the 380+ backlog of high-risk findings.
04
Enable regional failover
Disaster recovery capabilities were put in place so a regional outage wouldn’t take the platform down.
04 : Results & Impact

Measurable outcomes, delivered in under 90 days

The Client now operates on a stable, cloud-native architecture. Sensitive user and transactional data is encrypted at rest and in transit. Secrets are centrally managed. All environments are monitored and governed by secure, automated processes that reduce human error.

33% Reduction in monthly
AWS costs, over 3 months
380+ High-risk security findings
closed in 90 days
< 90 Days to deliver the
full transformation

Robust, documented deployment pipelines

CI/CD pipelines now ship with automated policy enforcement and reproducible builds. Every deploy is reviewable, auditable, and recoverable.

Improved uptime and response times

Containerized workloads on EKS scale with demand, and regional failover means a single-region incident no longer threatens the platform.

Full infrastructure visibility and auditability

Every environment is monitored. Secrets are centralized. Audit trails are complete. Enterprise partners see the compliance posture they expect.

Partnership that drove business outcomes

Elevate worked as an extension of the Client’s internal team, in daily standups, sprint planning, and high-priority initiatives, delivering technical execution and strategic input across the infrastructure roadmap.

In just three months, we eliminated hundreds of critical security vulnerabilities and cut AWS spending by a third, all while building the foundations for long-term resilience and scalability. The results of our work positioned the Client for long-term success, culminating in an acquisition by a national leader in real estate.

05 : Innovation & Future Outlook

Reducing costs, simplifying configuration, and building automation into every layer of the DevSecOps pipeline

Looking ahead, Elevate is continuing to evolve the platform to support long-term scale, security, and compliance. The short-term focus is on automating secrets rotation and improving observability. In the mid-term, we’re migrating low-traffic workloads to serverless and expanding compliance tooling. Longer-term, we’re building toward continuous compliance workflows and predictive monitoring.

This engagement highlights what’s possible when expert engineering meets strategic partnership. With Elevate, the Client didn’t just fix technical debt, they future-proofed their platform, restored confidence in their operations, and gained a trusted ally in their growth journey.

Project Roadmap

Short Term
Automate secrets rotation and credential governance.
Next 6 Months
Improve observability to reduce incident response times.
6–12 Months
Migrate low-traffic workloads to serverless architecture. Expand compliance tooling and centralized audit visibility.
1–2 Years
Launch continuous compliance workflows for audit readiness. Integrate predictive monitoring and ongoing system hardening.
More Stories

See what else we’ve built

Infrastructure debt holding you back?
Let’s make it easier, together

Whether you’re facing a pile of security findings, unpredictable cloud spend, or infrastructure that grew faster than its documentation, we’ve been through this landscape before. Our team is US-based, hands-on, and embedded with your engineering team from day one. Tell us what you’re building.