Complete Setup
This is the final step of the Guardian Pro onboarding process. Here you verify that everything is configured correctly, understand what happens next, and learn how to get the most out of your new governance platform.
Verification Checklist
Before completing setup, Guardian Pro runs an automated verification to confirm everything is in place. The checklist covers:
Account Connectivity
| Check | Description |
|---|---|
| Management role | Guardian Pro can assume the management role in your management account |
| Member roles | Guardian Pro can assume the member role in at least one monitored account |
| Organisations access | Account list and OU structure can be read successfully |
User Configuration
| Check | Description |
|---|---|
| Admin user exists | At least one user with Admin permissions is configured |
| Invitations sent | Team members have been invited (or explicitly skipped) |
Platform Readiness
| Check | Description |
|---|---|
| Account selection | At least one account is selected for monitoring |
| Role permissions | Member roles have the required read permissions |
All checks must pass before you can complete setup. If any check fails, click on it to see details and guidance on how to resolve the issue.
What Happens After Completion
When you click Complete Setup, Guardian Pro immediately begins working on your behalf:
1. First Resource Discovery
Guardian Pro starts its first resource discovery scan across all monitored accounts and regions. This automated pipeline:
- Inventories all supported AWS resources (compute, storage, networking, databases, security, and more)
- Maps relationships and dependencies between resources
- Builds an architecture graph of your infrastructure
- Identifies the AWS regions where you have active workloads
The first discovery scan typically completes in 5-10 minutes depending on the size of your environment. You can watch progress in real time on the dashboard.
2. First Governance Scan
Immediately after resource discovery completes, Guardian Pro runs its first governance scan. This evaluates your infrastructure against hundreds of automated checks across multiple categories:
- Security posture -- encryption, access controls, network exposure, IAM hygiene
- Cost optimisation -- idle resources, oversized instances, missing savings opportunities
- Operational excellence -- backup configurations, monitoring gaps, logging coverage
- Architectural resilience -- single points of failure, availability zone distribution, redundancy
3. Dashboard Population
As findings are generated, your Guardian Pro dashboard populates with:
- Health score -- an overall governance score for each account
- Finding summary -- categorised by severity (Critical, High, Medium, Low)
- Service breakdown -- which AWS services have the most findings
- Quick actions -- prioritised recommendations to improve your posture
4. AI Insights Generation
Guardian Pro's AI engine analyses the scan results to generate:
- Correlated insights that connect related findings across services
- Prioritised recommendations based on risk and impact
- Executive summaries for each monitored account
Exploring Your Dashboard
Once your first scan completes, head to the Dashboard to explore your results. Here is a guided tour of what to look at first:
Health Score
Your health score provides an at-a-glance view of your governance posture. A score of 100 means no findings were detected; scores decrease as findings accumulate, weighted by severity.
Critical and High Findings
Start with the most impactful findings:
- Navigate to the Action Centre
- Filter by Critical and High severity
- Review the top findings and their recommended actions
- For automated fixes, click Fix to preview the remediation before executing
Architecture Overview
Visit the Architecture Advisor to see:
- A visual map of your infrastructure topology
- Risk radar identifying architectural concerns
- Failure simulation to understand blast radius
Recommended Next Steps
After completing onboarding, here are the most valuable next steps to maximise your Guardian Pro experience:
1. Set Up Cost and Usage Reports (CUR)
To unlock the full power of Guardian Pro's cost intelligence features, configure AWS Cost and Usage Reports to feed data into the platform.
Cost analysis, anomaly detection, budget monitoring, and financial advisory features all require CUR data. Without CUR integration, these features will show limited or no data.
See CUR Setup Guide for step-by-step instructions.
2. Subscribe to Compliance Frameworks
If your organisation needs to comply with industry standards, activate the relevant compliance frameworks:
- CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark -- security best practices for AWS
- SOC 2 -- service organisation controls for security, availability, and confidentiality
- GDPR -- data protection requirements for EU data subjects
- AWS Well-Architected Framework -- AWS architectural best practices
Go to Settings > Frameworks to select your frameworks. See Compliance for details.
3. Configure Notifications
Set up notifications to stay informed about new findings, scan completions, and cost anomalies:
- Instant alerts for critical findings
- Daily digests summarising activity
- Weekly summaries for management reporting
- Webhook integrations for Slack or Microsoft Teams
Configure notifications in Settings > Notifications.
4. Explore the AI Assistant
Guardian Pro includes an AI-powered assistant that can answer questions about your infrastructure, explain findings, suggest remediation strategies, and simulate failure scenarios. Open the chat panel from any page to start a conversation.
5. Try the Infrastructure Wizard
If you are planning new infrastructure, the Infrastructure Wizard can generate production-ready infrastructure-as-code templates based on your requirements.
Ongoing Operations
After initial setup, Guardian Pro continuously monitors your environment:
| Activity | Frequency |
|---|---|
| Resource discovery | On-demand and scheduled |
| Governance scanning | On-demand and scheduled |
| Cost analysis | Daily (with CUR data) |
| Anomaly detection | Daily |
| Health score updates | After each scan |
| AI insights | After each scan |
| Compliance scoring | After each scan |
You can trigger scans on demand at any time from the dashboard.
Troubleshooting
First scan not starting
If the initial scan does not begin within a few minutes of completing setup:
- Check the dashboard for a Scan Progress banner -- the scan may already be running
- Navigate to Resources and click Run Discovery to manually trigger a scan
- If errors appear, verify account connectivity in Settings > Accounts
Dashboard showing no data
The dashboard requires at least one completed scan to display data:
- Wait for the first scan to finish (watch the progress banner)
- If the scan completed but the dashboard is empty, try refreshing the page
- Check the Action Centre for findings -- they appear there first
Need to re-run onboarding
If you need to make changes to your initial setup:
- Add/remove accounts: Go to Settings > Accounts
- Change user permissions: Go to Settings > Users
- Update role mappings: Go to Settings > Role Mappings
- Full reset: Contact support to reset your onboarding state
Related Pages
- Users & Permissions -- previous step
- Dashboard Overview -- your next destination
- Action Centre -- explore your findings
- CUR Setup Guide -- unlock cost intelligence
- Compliance Overview -- subscribe to frameworks
- Onboarding Overview -- full process summary