AWS for Industries
Applying the Well-Architected Financial Services Industry Lens
Today the latest version of the AWS Well-Architected Financial Services Industry Lens is available in the Lens Catalog of the AWS Well-Architected Tool.
In this post, we walk through how Financial Services Industry customers can apply and use the AWS Well-Architected Financial Services Industry Lens to conduct a Well-Architected Framework review.
The AWS Well-Architected (WA) Framework has been helping AWS customers and partners improve their cloud architectures since 2015. The AWS WA Framework includes domain-specific lenses, hands-on labs, and the AWS Well-Architected Tool. The AWS Well-Architected Tool is available at no cost in the AWS Management Console and provides guidance across six pillars:
Cloud architects, system architects, engineers, and developers can build secure, high-performance, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for their applications and workloads using the framework. In 2017, the framework was extended with the concept of “lenses” to optimize specific workload types, such as the financial services. Financial Services Industry Lens first published in 2020.
We are pleased to introduce an updated version of the AWS Well-Architected Financial Services Industry Lens.
AWS Well-Architected Framework lenses
The AWS Well-Architected Framework Lens is automatically applied when a workload is defined in the AWS Well-Architected Tool. A workload can have one or more lenses applied. Each lens has questions, best practices, notes, and improvement plans. It can capture the specifics of a working environment and let coworkers access this information in a single place (the AWS console) with no need for a separate tool.
Two kinds of lenses can be applied to your workloads: Lens Catalog lenses and Custom lenses.
- Lens Catalog: Official lenses that are created and maintained by AWS. The Lens Catalog is available to all users and does not require additional installation.
- Custom lenses: User-defined lenses that are not AWS official content. Create custom lenses with your own pillars, questions, best practices, and improvement plans and share custom lenses with other AWS accounts. A custom lens lets you review your workload using customized questions, such as reviewing workloads against the Well-Architected Framework and AWS-provided lenses. Custom lenses can include pillars, questions, answer choices, helpful resources, and improvement plans. Besides the lenses provided by AWS, you can create and use your own lenses, or use lenses shared with you.
What is in the Financial Services Industry Lens?
The Financial Services Industry Lens specifies best practices for security, data privacy, and resiliency that should address the requirements of financial institutions based on our experience working with financial institutions around the world. It provides guidance on guardrails for technology teams to implement and confidently use AWS to build and deploy applications. This Lens offers advice on creating transparency and auditability in your AWS environment. It suggests controls to help you expedite adopting new services into your environment.
The Financial Services Industry Lens covers common scenarios and drivers that influence the design and architecture of your financial services workloads on AWS: financial data, regulatory reporting, grid computing, open banking, user engagement, and artificial intelligence/machine learning.
Who should use the Financial Services Industry Lens?
The Financial Services Industry Lens is intended for those in technology roles, such as chief technology officers (CTOs), chief information security officers (CISOs), architects, developers, engineers, compliance officers, and operations team members. It provides a way to measure consistently architectures against best practices and identify areas for improvement.
How to use the Financial Services Industry Lens
AWS Well-Architected Tool in the AWS Console provides a set of Lens assessments in its Lens Catalog, including the Financial Services Industry Lens. The Financial Services Industry Lens is available via Lens Catalog in all AWS Regions, where the AWS Well-Architected Tool is available and it is also available as a whitepaper.
Prerequisite
To get started with AWS Well-Architected Tool in your organization, you must provide your roles, users, or groups access to AWS Well-Architected Tool.
Accessing AWS Well-Architected Tool
To begin, log into the AWS Well-Architected Tool via the AWS Management Console. If you are already in the AWS Management Console, search for well-architected in the search bar and open AWS Well-Architected Tool.
Figure 1: Accessing AWS Well-Architected Tool from the AWS Management Console
Applying the Financial Services Industry Lens
There are two ways to apply the Financial Services Industry Lens – by defining a new workload or using an existing workload.
New workload
In the Define a workload section, choose Define workload. Alternately, in the left navigation pane, choose Workloads and choose Define workload.
Figure 2: Define a new workload
Step 1 – Specify your workload properties (name, description, review owner, environment, regions)
Step 2 (optional) – Apply and associate a profile with the workload.
Figure 3: Specify your workload properties
Step 3 – Apply the Financial Services Industry Lens by selecting it from the Lens Catalog, choose Define workload to save these values, and define the workload.
Figure 4: Select and apply the Financial Services Industry Lens from the Lens Catalog
Existing workload
In the left navigation pane, choose Workloads. Select the workload you want to edit, apply the Financial Services Industry Lens, and choose View details.
Figure 5: Select the existing workload to apply the Financial Services Industry Lens
Step 1 – The Overview tab on the workload details page is displayed. Scroll down to Lenses section and choose Edit to add a lens.
Figure 6: Edit the lenses applied for existing workload
Step 2 – On the Apply lenses page, scroll down to the Lens Catalog section and search for the Financial Services Industry Lens. Select the lens and choose Save.
Figure 7: Search and apply the Financial Services Industry Lens from the Lens Catalog
The Financial Services Industry Lens is applied, and you can see it in the list of all Lenses applied to your workload.
Figure 8: Validate the Financial Services Industry Lens
Using the Financial Services Industry Lens
After a workload is defined and the lens applied, you can start reviewing it using the Financial Services Industry Lens. In the left navigation pane, choose Workloads and select the workload name to open the workload details page. Choose Continue reviewing and select Financial Services Industry Lens.
Figure 9: Review the workload using the Financial Services Industry Lens
The Review workload page presents questions for the Financial Services Industry Lens that span the pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability.
Go through questions in each pillar, choose the best practices that you are following from the list provided. For additional guidance on any item, choose Info and view the information in the right panel.
Figure 10: Go through questions in each pillar
Choose Save and exit at any time to save your changes and pause reviewing your workload.
Based on the best practices selected, the AWS Well-Architected Tool identifies areas of high and medium risk as measured against the Financial Services Industry Lens. After completing the questions, you can navigate to the Financial Services Industry Lens overview page to view any risks identified and review the improvement plan. The improvement plan guides implementing missing best practices and remediating risks.
Figure 11: Navigate and view any identified risks as measured against the Financial Services Industry Lens
Figure 12: Review the improvement plan
For more information about using AWS Well-Architected Tool and conducting Well-Architected reviews, see AWS Well-Architected Tool user guide.
As with the AWS Well-Architected Framework and other industry and technology lenses, we recommend applying the guidance and recommendations in the Financial Services Industry Lens early and often – as you approach architectural and service design decisions and whenever you carry out Well-Architected Reviews of financial services.
Conclusion
We encourage you to conduct a Well-Architected Framework Review of your workloads using the Financial Services Industry Lens available in the Lens Catalog of the Well-Architected Tool. There are no costs to using the AWS Well-Architected Tool.
After applying the Financial Services Industry Lens, you will understand AWS’ best practices and strategies to use when designing architectures for developing and deploying financial services’ applications. It augments the Well-Architected Framework and highlights additional essential principles that should be considered for Financial Services Industry workloads.
As you review the Lens, we will appreciate your comments and feedback to help us improve the Financial Services Industry Lens as the industry evolves. We will continually refresh the content as we identify new best practices, requirements, and common scenarios that impact the Financial Services workloads. For follow-up questions or comments, join our growing community on AWS re:Post.
Contact your AWS account team to engage a Financial Services Industry specialist solution architect if you require additional expert guidance.
Learn more about AWS for Financial Services, customer case studies, and additional resources on our Financial Services website.
Additional resources:
What is the AWS Well-Architected Tool?
AWS Well-Architected – Getting started video
Financial Services Industry Lens Whitepaper
AWS Well-Architected Framework
AWS Well-Architected Labs
AWS for Financial Services