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Ensuring Compliance and Governance in the AWS Cloud with AWS Config and AWS Organizations

Emmanuel Odenyire Anyira's photo
Emmanuel Odenyire Anyira
·

4 min read

Introduction

In this blog article, I am discussing two key AWS services, AWS Organizations and AWS Config, which help organizations maintain compliance and governance standards in the AWS Cloud. AWS Organizations enables organizations to centrally manage and govern multiple AWS accounts, while AWS Config enables organizations to assess, audit, and evaluate the configuration of their AWS resources. The blog describes the key features of both services and highlights their importance in maintaining compliance and governance in the AWS Cloud.

  1. AWS Organization:

AWS Organizations is a service that enables organizations to centrally manage and govern multiple AWS accounts. It provides a way to create and manage groups of AWS accounts, called Organizational Units (OUs), to help with governance, compliance, and cost management. AWS Organizations enables organizations to automate the process of account creation and management, and to apply policies to accounts within an organization.

Key Features of AWS Organizations

i. Centralized Account Management

AWS Organizations enables organizations to centrally manage multiple AWS accounts from a single console. It provides a way to create and manage groups of AWS accounts, called Organizational Units (OUs). OUs help to organize accounts for governance, compliance, and cost management purposes.

ii. Policy-Based Management

AWS Organizations enables organizations to create and apply policies to accounts within an organization. Policies can be used to enforce security, compliance, and cost management standards across an organization. AWS Organizations supports policies at the OU and account level.

iii. Automated Account Management

AWS Organizations enables organizations to automate the process of account creation and management. It provides a way to create new accounts automatically based on pre-defined templates and policies. Organizations can also automate the process of joining existing accounts to an organization.

iv. Consolidated Billing

AWS Organizations enables organizations to consolidate billing across multiple AWS accounts. It provides a way to link AWS accounts together and create a single bill for all accounts in an organization. Consolidated billing helps to simplify billing and cost management for organizations with multiple AWS accounts.

v. Cross-Account Resource Access

AWS Organizations enables organizations to share resources across multiple AWS accounts. It provides a way to grant access to resources in one account to users or applications in another account. This feature enables organizations to enforce security and compliance standards while sharing resources across accounts.

2. AWS Config

AWS Config is a service that enables organizations to assess, audit, and evaluate the configuration of their AWS resources. It provides a way to monitor and track changes to AWS resources, including changes to configuration settings, compliance policies, and security policies. AWS Config enables organizations to maintain compliance and security standards across their AWS resources.

Key Features of AWS Config

i. Configuration Assessment

AWS Config enables organizations to assess the configuration of their AWS resources. It provides a way to track configuration changes over time and evaluate whether those changes comply with organizational policies and standards.

ii. Compliance Monitoring

AWS Config enables organizations to monitor compliance with regulatory and industry standards. It provides a way to evaluate whether AWS resources comply with standards such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, and SOC 2.

iii. Security Analysis

AWS Config enables organizations to analyze the security of their AWS resources. It provides a way to monitor and evaluate security configurations and settings for AWS resources, including EC2 instances, S3 buckets, and VPCs.

iv. Change Tracking

AWS Config enables organizations to track changes to their AWS resources. It provides a way to monitor and evaluate changes to configuration settings, compliance policies, and security policies over time.

v. Custom Rules

AWS Config enables organizations to create custom rules to evaluate the configuration of their AWS resources. Custom rules can be used to enforce organizational policies and standards, and to evaluate the security and compliance of AWS resources.

Conclusion

Compliance and governance are critical concerns for organizations that use the AWS Cloud. AWS provides several services and tools to help organizations maintain compliance and governance standards, including AWS Organizations and AWS Config. AWS Organizations enables organizations to centrally manage and govern multiple AWS accounts, while AWS Config enables organizations to assess, audit, and evaluate the configuration of their AWS resources. Together, these services provide a comprehensive solution for compliance and governance in the AWS Cloud.

References

Here are some references for the article:

Note: These references were accurate as of my knowledge cutoff date of 24th April 2023. Some information may have changed since then, so it’s always a good idea to check the official AWS documentation for the latest information.