
Carly Gilson engineered and maintained authentication and onboarding systems for the govuk-one-login/authentication-api repository, focusing on security, reliability, and developer enablement. Over 13 months, she delivered features such as rate limiting, PKCE support, and resource-based DynamoDB access controls, using technologies like AWS, Terraform, and TypeScript. Carly consolidated WAF management under Firewall Management Service, centralized CloudWatch observability, and improved error logging to enhance monitoring and compliance. Her work included rigorous infrastructure as code practices, automated testing integration, and CI/CD stability improvements. These efforts reduced risk, improved production readiness, and ensured robust, auditable security and operational governance across environments.

October 2025: AIS failure metrics reporting reliability improved for govuk-one-login/authentication-api. Implemented environment variable fix to ensure AIS failure metrics are captured and reported correctly in both IPV callback configuration and processing identity handling. This resolved monitoring gaps and improved data quality for dashboards and alerts. Focused on reliability and observability improvements; no new user-facing features this month.
October 2025: AIS failure metrics reporting reliability improved for govuk-one-login/authentication-api. Implemented environment variable fix to ensure AIS failure metrics are captured and reported correctly in both IPV callback configuration and processing identity handling. This resolved monitoring gaps and improved data quality for dashboards and alerts. Focused on reliability and observability improvements; no new user-facing features this month.
September 2025: Security hardening and observability improvements in the govuk-one-login/authentication-api. Implemented resource-based access controls for PII-containing DynamoDB tables to ensure only admin TEAM roles in non-development environments can access sensitive data, and enhanced authentication error logging to include specific exception messages, improving triage and debugging. These changes reduce data exposure risk, support compliance requirements, and improve incident response. The month focused on robustness and governance with no customer-facing feature releases.
September 2025: Security hardening and observability improvements in the govuk-one-login/authentication-api. Implemented resource-based access controls for PII-containing DynamoDB tables to ensure only admin TEAM roles in non-development environments can access sensitive data, and enhanced authentication error logging to include specific exception messages, improving triage and debugging. These changes reduce data exposure risk, support compliance requirements, and improve incident response. The month focused on robustness and governance with no customer-facing feature releases.
Month: 2025-08 | Focused on security hardening and policy governance for the authentication API repository govuk-one-login/authentication-api. Delivered two production-ready features tightening access controls and reliability across environments, with no reported major bugs fixed this period.
Month: 2025-08 | Focused on security hardening and policy governance for the authentication API repository govuk-one-login/authentication-api. Delivered two production-ready features tightening access controls and reliability across environments, with no reported major bugs fixed this period.
July 2025 monthly summary focusing on key accomplishments: Delivered Relying Party rate limiting in staging for govuk-one-login/authentication-api to align with development parity and accelerate performance testing. Change implemented with a clear audit trail and tied to a single commit. This enhancement improves test fidelity, supports performance investigations, and reduces risk during staged rollouts.
July 2025 monthly summary focusing on key accomplishments: Delivered Relying Party rate limiting in staging for govuk-one-login/authentication-api to align with development parity and accelerate performance testing. Change implemented with a clear audit trail and tied to a single commit. This enhancement improves test fidelity, supports performance investigations, and reduces risk during staged rollouts.
June 2025: Delivered Infrastructure Modernization for the authentication-api by consolidating WAF management under the Firewall Management Service (FMS) and centralizing CloudWatch observability into the main CloudFormation template. This reduced fragmentation between WAF attachments and monitoring tooling, improving governance, visibility, and response readiness. The changes establish a solid foundation for automated, auditable security posture and future templating simplification.
June 2025: Delivered Infrastructure Modernization for the authentication-api by consolidating WAF management under the Firewall Management Service (FMS) and centralizing CloudWatch observability into the main CloudFormation template. This reduced fragmentation between WAF attachments and monitoring tooling, improving governance, visibility, and response readiness. The changes establish a solid foundation for automated, auditable security posture and future templating simplification.
May 2025 performance summary focusing on security hardening, production readiness, and maintainability across three GOV.UK One Login repositories. Implemented WAF handling, OAuth security enhancements, and infrastructure safeguards, while expanding vulnerability monitoring and streamlining test/session code. These changes improved production reliability, reduced risk exposure, and accelerated release readiness.
May 2025 performance summary focusing on security hardening, production readiness, and maintainability across three GOV.UK One Login repositories. Implemented WAF handling, OAuth security enhancements, and infrastructure safeguards, while expanding vulnerability monitoring and streamlining test/session code. These changes improved production reliability, reduced risk exposure, and accelerated release readiness.
April 2025 monthly summary for GovUK One Login platform focused on delivering security, reliability, and developer enablement through concrete features, targeted bug fixes, and reinforced observability. Key outcomes included WAF migration readiness for authentication-api, PKCE support in the integration environment, security hygiene improvements, and enhanced testing tooling, underpinned by stronger error visibility and alerts.
April 2025 monthly summary for GovUK One Login platform focused on delivering security, reliability, and developer enablement through concrete features, targeted bug fixes, and reinforced observability. Key outcomes included WAF migration readiness for authentication-api, PKCE support in the integration environment, security hygiene improvements, and enhanced testing tooling, underpinned by stronger error visibility and alerts.
March 2025 performance summary for govuk-one-login platform: Delivered security posture improvements, policy tagging, and enhanced observability across onboarding-product-page, authentication-api, and onboarding-self-service-experience. Key work focused on governance, reliability, and faster secure delivery of features to production. Key features delivered: - Content Ownership and Access for Product Pages (cf0650d1f4395bd373d442b83fa14b92c59b0347): enabled adoption architects to manage product-page templates and related content with scoped permissions, accelerating content updates and governance. - FMS tagging applied to infrastructure and resources (b4599b54e4c4860df56c013684472a23a0d6733e; a3b295755a4014be77af2a00525df3cda0e4b443): API Gateway, ALB, and related content/resources now identifiable for policy-based security enforcement. - Canary Alarms and Anomaly Detection for Authentication API (ff6920c8dc62f2561b1f75d329e70f5b20de6925; a81c1e49ce2070ba64d886d4084e197669904b12; 67da99f097d7f52e9809c8d27dae1d1261668788; 381d768ba588519878d5b5122e5326e173714c24): introduced canary alarms and anomaly detection to proactively identify issues across authentication Lambdas. - Backchannel Logout Monitoring Improvements (1c7f783593013076790dae9322a823611089b2a8; 4be6efa3bbdb144e2460cffa8cd264ef030e9cc9; e1a49d7e2eaf9edbd328c84786673a90b69c0e1c): restored noisy alarms, increased fault-tolerance in monitoring, and removed a specific runbook to reduce maintenance burden. - Dev environment security hardening and WAF scoping (71b9962383c96c5e667d5a9d0d5c3edc29041647; ef45a74b42e0d3e712a9ea4c09d5d48fdbd5332c; 3d3696c543d6d9b28ec08a5f94c0572f7a046249; 6d734b67713393fc5cc9643987b7c7860e14b416; 2ea633217e167a5a2308f2d4556bdf56332cc3c3): implemented Web ACL isolation in development/build environments, disassociated WAF from non-prod environments, and corrected KMS permissions to align with security requirements, reducing blast radius and maintenance costs. Major bugs fixed: - Backchannel Logout Monitoring: restored and tuned CloudWatch alarms to reduce noise and improve alert reliability in production (1c7f783593013076790dae9322a823611089b2a8; 4be6efa3bbdb144e2460cffa8cd264ef030e9cc9; e1a49d7e2eaf9edbd328c84786673a90b69c0e1c). - KMS permission typo: corrected kms:ReEncrypt to kms:ReEncrypt* to align with linter recommendations and ensure proper permissions (2ea633217e167a5a2308f2d4556bdf56332cc3c3). Overall impact and accomplishments: - Strengthened security governance and policy enforceability with cross-resource FMS tagging and CloudFront-aware firewall policy considerations, while reducing unnecessary firewall complexity. - Improved system reliability and proactive issue detection through Canary Alarms, anomaly detection, and targeted monitoring improvements across authentication workflows. - Reduced operational overhead and risk by isolating WAF in production, tidying dev environments, and fixing configuration typos that could hinder automated scans and enforcement. Technologies/skills demonstrated: - Cloud security and IaC practices: WAF/WebACL scoping, Web Application Firewall tagging, KMS permissions, CloudFront-based policy optimization, FMS tagging across API Gateway/ALB. - Observability and incident response: CloudWatch alarms, canary monitoring, anomaly detection, alarm tuning, runbook cleanup. - Secure delivery and governance: content ownership permissions, policy-based security controls, environment isolation, and risk reduction through policy tagging.
March 2025 performance summary for govuk-one-login platform: Delivered security posture improvements, policy tagging, and enhanced observability across onboarding-product-page, authentication-api, and onboarding-self-service-experience. Key work focused on governance, reliability, and faster secure delivery of features to production. Key features delivered: - Content Ownership and Access for Product Pages (cf0650d1f4395bd373d442b83fa14b92c59b0347): enabled adoption architects to manage product-page templates and related content with scoped permissions, accelerating content updates and governance. - FMS tagging applied to infrastructure and resources (b4599b54e4c4860df56c013684472a23a0d6733e; a3b295755a4014be77af2a00525df3cda0e4b443): API Gateway, ALB, and related content/resources now identifiable for policy-based security enforcement. - Canary Alarms and Anomaly Detection for Authentication API (ff6920c8dc62f2561b1f75d329e70f5b20de6925; a81c1e49ce2070ba64d886d4084e197669904b12; 67da99f097d7f52e9809c8d27dae1d1261668788; 381d768ba588519878d5b5122e5326e173714c24): introduced canary alarms and anomaly detection to proactively identify issues across authentication Lambdas. - Backchannel Logout Monitoring Improvements (1c7f783593013076790dae9322a823611089b2a8; 4be6efa3bbdb144e2460cffa8cd264ef030e9cc9; e1a49d7e2eaf9edbd328c84786673a90b69c0e1c): restored noisy alarms, increased fault-tolerance in monitoring, and removed a specific runbook to reduce maintenance burden. - Dev environment security hardening and WAF scoping (71b9962383c96c5e667d5a9d0d5c3edc29041647; ef45a74b42e0d3e712a9ea4c09d5d48fdbd5332c; 3d3696c543d6d9b28ec08a5f94c0572f7a046249; 6d734b67713393fc5cc9643987b7c7860e14b416; 2ea633217e167a5a2308f2d4556bdf56332cc3c3): implemented Web ACL isolation in development/build environments, disassociated WAF from non-prod environments, and corrected KMS permissions to align with security requirements, reducing blast radius and maintenance costs. Major bugs fixed: - Backchannel Logout Monitoring: restored and tuned CloudWatch alarms to reduce noise and improve alert reliability in production (1c7f783593013076790dae9322a823611089b2a8; 4be6efa3bbdb144e2460cffa8cd264ef030e9cc9; e1a49d7e2eaf9edbd328c84786673a90b69c0e1c). - KMS permission typo: corrected kms:ReEncrypt to kms:ReEncrypt* to align with linter recommendations and ensure proper permissions (2ea633217e167a5a2308f2d4556bdf56332cc3c3). Overall impact and accomplishments: - Strengthened security governance and policy enforceability with cross-resource FMS tagging and CloudFront-aware firewall policy considerations, while reducing unnecessary firewall complexity. - Improved system reliability and proactive issue detection through Canary Alarms, anomaly detection, and targeted monitoring improvements across authentication workflows. - Reduced operational overhead and risk by isolating WAF in production, tidying dev environments, and fixing configuration typos that could hinder automated scans and enforcement. Technologies/skills demonstrated: - Cloud security and IaC practices: WAF/WebACL scoping, Web Application Firewall tagging, KMS permissions, CloudFront-based policy optimization, FMS tagging across API Gateway/ALB. - Observability and incident response: CloudWatch alarms, canary monitoring, anomaly detection, alarm tuning, runbook cleanup. - Secure delivery and governance: content ownership permissions, policy-based security controls, environment isolation, and risk reduction through policy tagging.
February 2025: Strengthened reliability and observability of the authentication platform while standardizing code quality tooling across onboarding and simulator repos. Key outcomes include more stable alerting for canary and backchannel alarms; enhanced observability and streamlined deployment notifications; and consistent migration to SonarQube for CI/CD code quality analysis. These efforts reduce alert fatigue, improve incident response, and raise the overall security and quality of the codebase.
February 2025: Strengthened reliability and observability of the authentication platform while standardizing code quality tooling across onboarding and simulator repos. Key outcomes include more stable alerting for canary and backchannel alarms; enhanced observability and streamlined deployment notifications; and consistent migration to SonarQube for CI/CD code quality analysis. These efforts reduce alert fatigue, improve incident response, and raise the overall security and quality of the codebase.
January 2025 — Monthly summary for govuk-one-login development across multiple repos. Delivered security policy enforcement, improved observability, stabilized CI/CD/test infrastructure, and advanced automated acceptance testing. These efforts reduce risk, increase deployment confidence, and improve developer productivity across authentication, onboarding, and simulator workstreams.
January 2025 — Monthly summary for govuk-one-login development across multiple repos. Delivered security policy enforcement, improved observability, stabilized CI/CD/test infrastructure, and advanced automated acceptance testing. These efforts reduce risk, increase deployment confidence, and improve developer productivity across authentication, onboarding, and simulator workstreams.
December 2024 monthly summary: Across the simulator and authentication API, the team delivered stability, data quality improvements, and enhanced observability that collectively reduce risk in production and accelerate incident response. Key work focused on correcting build and deployment paths, hardening session management, and improving monitoring for authentication and user data flows. The changes align with business goals of reliable login, secure logout, and faster remediation when issues arise.
December 2024 monthly summary: Across the simulator and authentication API, the team delivered stability, data quality improvements, and enhanced observability that collectively reduce risk in production and accelerate incident response. Key work focused on correcting build and deployment paths, hardening session management, and improving monitoring for authentication and user data flows. The changes align with business goals of reliable login, secure logout, and faster remediation when issues arise.
November 2024 monthly summary focusing on delivering routing fidelity, incident response efficiency, privacy-aware data responses, and security-hardening across authentication-api and simulator. Key business value includes correct routing for stub RP clients, faster incident handling via linked runbooks, privacy-conscious UserInfo responses, and CVE mitigations through dependency pinning.
November 2024 monthly summary focusing on delivering routing fidelity, incident response efficiency, privacy-aware data responses, and security-hardening across authentication-api and simulator. Key business value includes correct routing for stub RP clients, faster incident handling via linked runbooks, privacy-conscious UserInfo responses, and CVE mitigations through dependency pinning.
October 2024 delivered observable enhancements and acceptance-test readiness: updated runbook-linked CloudWatch alarms, aligned encryption key IDs across infra, and introduced an RP microservice for simulator-based acceptance testing with Docker/Docker-Compose. No major bugs reported in this period.
October 2024 delivered observable enhancements and acceptance-test readiness: updated runbook-linked CloudWatch alarms, aligned encryption key IDs across infra, and introduced an RP microservice for simulator-based acceptance testing with Docker/Docker-Compose. No major bugs reported in this period.
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