Overview
AWS Control Tower is a service offered by Amazon Web Services that provides an easy way to set up and govern a secure, multi-account AWS environment based on best practices. It automates the set-up of your baseline environment using a landing zone, which is a well-architected, multi-account AWS environment. Control Tower simplifies the process of setting up new accounts and resources with predefined templates that enforce security and compliance from the start.
Key Features of AWS Control Tower
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Automated Landing Zone Setup: AWS Control Tower automatically sets up a landing zone, which includes multiple AWS accounts and resources organized in a way that aligns with AWS best practices. This setup includes configuring identity management, federated access, centralized logging, and cross-account security audits.
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Governance and Compliance: It offers governance and compliance through guardrails, which are high-level rules that govern the compliance status of AWS resources. These guardrails can be preventive (enforcing policies) or detective (monitoring compliance with policies).
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Account Factory: This feature automates the process of provisioning new AWS accounts using pre-configured templates. Account Factory helps ensure that new accounts adhere to the company’s policies and structures, simplifying account management and reducing the potential for configuration errors.
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Centralized Logging and Monitoring: Control Tower automatically sets up centralized logging from AWS CloudTrail and AWS Config, along with a dashboard for monitoring the activities and compliance status of all accounts in the environment.
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Integrated with AWS Services: It integrates seamlessly with other AWS services like AWS Organizations for account management, AWS Service Catalog for deploying resources, and AWS Single Sign-On (SSO) for managing access.
How It Works
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Setup: When you set up AWS Control Tower, it creates a landing zone that includes a multi-account AWS environment using AWS Organizations. It configures shared accounts for logging, auditing, and shared services.
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Define Guardrails: You define and apply guardrails which automatically enforce policy or check for policy adherence across the accounts in your organization. These guardrails help ensure security, compliance, and operational policies are enforced or monitored.
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Use Account Factory: To add new accounts to your environment, you use the Account Factory, which provisions accounts based on your organization’s blueprints, ensuring consistency and compliance.
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Monitor and Manage: Utilize the Control Tower dashboard to monitor the health and compliance status of your AWS environment. The dashboard provides insights into potential security issues, identifies non-compliant resources, and tracks activities across your accounts.
Benefits
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Simplified Multi-Account Management: Streamlines the process of setting up and managing multiple AWS accounts, ensuring they all adhere to the organization’s policies and best practices.
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Enhanced Security and Compliance: Automates the enforcement of security and compliance policies across your AWS environment, reducing the risk of human error and security breaches.
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Operational Efficiency: Reduces the operational overhead of managing AWS resources and accounts by providing automated setup, compliance monitoring, and centralized management.
Use Cases
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Enterprise Cloud Deployments: Ideal for large enterprises that require a structured and governed multi-account AWS environment to ensure security and compliance.
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Regulated Industries: Useful for industries that have strict regulatory requirements, as it ensures that all accounts and services are compliant with relevant policies and regulations.
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Rapid Expansion: Helps organizations quickly scale their cloud infrastructure while maintaining control and governance, particularly useful when expanding the number of projects or teams using AWS resources.
AWS Control Tower is particularly valuable for organizations looking to scale their AWS usage without compromising on security and compliance, providing a robust framework for managing complex and multi-faceted cloud environments.