Victor Leung

AWS Control Tower - A Secure and Governed Multi-Account Environment

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Victor Leung
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4 min read

Last weekend, I was taking the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional exam. One feature that I seldom got opportunity to practice is AWS Control Tower, which is a service that helps you set up and govern a secure, multi-account AWS environment. It provides a landing zone that is compliant with AWS best practices, and it includes a set of guardrails that help you prevent deviations from those best practices.

Control Tower is built on top of AWS Organizations, which provides a central place to manage your AWS accounts and resources. Control Tower extends Organizations by providing a number of additional features, including:

  • A landing zone template that you can use to create a new AWS environment that is compliant with AWS best practices.

  • A set of guardrails that help you prevent deviations from AWS best practices.

  • A centralized console for managing your landing zone and guardrails.

  • Integration with other AWS services, such as AWS Security Hub and AWS Systems Manager.

Control Tower is a good choice for organizations of all sizes, but it is especially well-suited for large organizations with complex AWS environments. It can help you to:

  • Improve your security posture by enforcing AWS best practices.

  • Reduce your risk of compliance violations by providing a landing zone that is compliant with AWS best practices.

  • Simplify the management of your multi-account AWS environment by providing a centralized console and a set of guardrails.

Benefits of using AWS Control Tower

There are a number of benefits to using AWS Control Tower, including:

  • Improved security posture: Control Tower helps you to improve your security posture by enforcing AWS best practices. For example, Control Tower can prevent you from creating IAM users with excessive permissions, or from launching EC2 instances in an unsecured manner.

  • Reduced risk of compliance violations: Control Tower provides a landing zone that is compliant with AWS best practices, which can help you to reduce your risk of compliance violations. For example, the Control Tower landing zone includes a number of security features that are required for PCI DSS compliance.

  • Simplified management of multi-account AWS environments: Control Tower provides a centralized console for managing your landing zone and guardrails. This can simplify the management of your multi-account AWS environment and help you to avoid errors.

  • Reduced costs: Control Tower can help you to reduce costs by preventing you from provisioning resources that you do not need. For example, Control Tower can prevent you from creating EC2 instances that are too large for your needs, or from launching unused EC2 instances.

Use cases for AWS Control Tower

AWS Control Tower can be used by organizations of all sizes, but it is especially well-suited for large organizations with complex AWS environments. Some common use cases for AWS Control Tower include:

  • Setting up a new AWS environment: Control Tower can be used to set up a new AWS environment that is compliant with AWS best practices. This can help organizations to avoid security risks and compliance violations.

  • Managing a multi-account AWS environment: Control Tower can be used to manage a multi-account AWS environment. This can help organizations to simplify the management of their AWS environment and avoid errors.

  • Improving security posture: Control Tower can be used to improve security posture by enforcing AWS best practices. This can help organizations to protect their AWS environment from security threats.

  • Reducing risk of compliance violations: Control Tower can be used to reduce the risk of compliance violations by providing a landing zone that is compliant with AWS best practices. This can help organizations to meet their compliance requirements.

Getting started with AWS Control Tower

To get started with AWS Control Tower, you will need to create an AWS account and sign in to the AWS Console. Once you are signed in, you can go to the AWS Control Tower console to create a new landing zone.

The process of creating a landing zone is relatively simple. You will need to choose a region for your landing zone and select a landing zone template. Control Tower provides a number of landing zone templates to choose from, including templates for specific industries and compliance requirements.

Once you have chosen a landing zone template, Control Tower will create the landing zone and deploy the necessary resources. (Be aware of the cost associated if you're just practicing.) This process can take some time to complete.

Once the landing zone has been created, you can start using it to provision and manage your AWS resources. You can use the AWS Control Tower console to manage your landing zone and guardrails, and you can use the other AWS services to provision and manage your AWS resources.

Conclusion

AWS Control Tower is a powerful service that can help you to set up and govern a secure, multi-account AWS environment. It is a good choice for organizations of all sizes, but it is especially well-suited for large organizations with complex AWS environments. By the way, I’m happy to share that I’ve obtained a new certification: AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional from Amazon Web Services (AWS) https://www.credly.com/badges/d59230a5-c9bd-4d6f-8673-9e2613987d28/linked_in?t=s25m57

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