AWS Cloud Operations Blog

Category: Security, Identity, & Compliance

Write preventive compliance rules for AWS CloudFormation templates the cfn-guard way

Continuous delivery pipelines, combined with infrastructure as code tools like AWS CloudFormation, allow our customers to manage applications in a safe and predictable way. CloudFormation helps customers model and provision their AWS and third-party application resources, with features such as rollback to provide automation and safety. Together with tools such as AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodePipeline, […]

Best Practices for Organizational Units with AWS Organizations

AWS customers look to move quickly and securely when launching new business innovations. The multi-account environment provides guidance to help customers plan their AWS environment. This framework is designed to meet security needs, while maintaining the ability to scale and adapt their environments with changing business demands. The basis of a well-architected multi-account AWS environment […]

Configure Session Manager access for federated users using SAML session tags

In this blog post, we show you how to configure Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) permissions to federate users into AWS Systems Manager Session Manager. We demonstrate how you can use attributes defined in external identity systems as part of the ABAC decisions within AWS, with SAML session tags. For example, you can grant access to […]

Delegated Administrator for AWS Service Catalog

Simplify sharing your AWS Service Catalog portfolios in an AWS Organizations setup

Note: This is a June 2020 update to the blog post How to set up a multi-region, multi-account catalog of company standard AWS Service Catalog products. Overview I have seen interest in the native infrastructure template sharing capabilities offered by AWS Service Catalog. For example, my customers share AWS Service Catalog portfolios directly to AWS […]

AWS Systems Manager patch compliance data to AWS Security Hub

Multi-Account patch compliance with Patch Manager and Security Hub

Update 10/2020 – Viewing patch compliance findings across AWS accounts in AWS Security Hub is supported natively. For more information please see What’s new announcement here. Introduction In this blog post, I discuss how to import critical patch compliance findings into Security Hub. Security Hub is a service that provides customers with a comprehensive view […]

AWS IAM Access Analyzer and AWS Control Tower Featured Image

Enabling AWS IAM Access Analyzer on AWS Control Tower accounts

Many of the customers we work with look for ways to manage compliance and gain additional insights across their AWS multi-account organization from a central location. We often begin the discussion with AWS Control Tower, as it offers the easiest way to set up and govern a multi-account AWS environment. AWS Control Tower is an […]

Implementing Serverless Transit Network Orchestrator (STNO) in AWS Control Tower

Introduction Many of the customers that we have worked with are using advanced network architectures in AWS for multi-VPC and multi-account architectures. Placing workloads into separate Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) has several advantages, chief among them isolating sensitive workloads and allowing teams to innovate without fear of impacting other systems. Many companies are taking […]

Deploy AWS Config Rules and Conformance Packs using a delegated admin

AWS Config Rules allow customers to evaluate the configuration of resources against best practices and perform remediation when specified configuration policies are not being followed. Using AWS Config Conformance Packs, customers can create a collection of AWS Config rules and remediation actions in a single pack that can be deployed across AWS Organizations. This provides […]

Automate account creation and resource provisioning for AWS GovCloud(US), using AWS Service Catalog, AWS Organizations, and AWS Lambda

Public and private sector customers are now often working to automate their account creation and operations into the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. These customers use the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions to access FedRamp certified services and ITAR-governed datasets for multiple accounts. Managing this type of multi-account enterprise footprint with AWS Organizations helps reduce operational costs […]

Managing AWS Organizations accounts using AWS Config and AWS CloudFormation StackSets

AWS Organizations enables you to consolidate multiple AWS accounts into an organization that you create and centrally manage. Organizations includes consolidated billing and account management capabilities that enable you to better meet your business’s budgetary, security, and compliance needs. As an administrator of an organization, you can create member accounts in your organization and invite […]