How Can AWS Control Tower Help Manage Your Cloud Environment

AWS Control Tower is a service that simplifies the process of setting up new multi-account environments with predefined security baseline templates. It enables self-service for new account provisioning with automated application of baselines and account standards. This service incorporates the knowledge that AWS Professional Services has gained over the course of thousands of successful customer engagements and also draws from the recommendations found in AWS whitepapers, documentation, the Well-Architected Framework, and training.

Key Features of AWS Control Tower

AWS Control Tower provides several features that help with the management and governance of AWS accounts:

Landing Zone: The overall multi-account environment that Control Tower sets up for you, starting from a fresh AWS account.
Guardrails: Automated implementation of policy controls, with a focus on security, compliance, and cost management. Guardrails can be preventive (blocking actions that are deemed as risky), or detective (raising an alert on non-conformant actions).
Account Factory: A feature that allows you to provision new AWS accounts as needed. This can be particularly useful for creating accounts for different teams or applications.
Control Tower Lifecycle Events: Whenever a new managed account is created using the AWS Control Tower Account Factory, the Control Tower Lifecycle Event is invoked to deploy the existing stack of AWS resources to the new account.

Using AWS Control Tower

Using AWS Control Tower involves several steps:

Set up Landing Zone: Starting from a new AWS account that is both Master Payer and Organization Master, open the Control Tower Console, and click ‘Set up landing zone’.

Advantages:

Automates the setup of well-architected AWS environments.
Provides a solid foundation for AWS accounts with networking, security, and identity configurations.
Reduces setup time and ensures consistency across accounts.
Start with a secure and well-governed AWS environment.

Create AWS Accounts: Using the Account Factory, you can provision AWS accounts for your teams, applications, etc. You also have control over the VPC configuration that is used for new accounts.

Advantages:

Simplifies the process of creating and managing AWS accounts.
Enforces naming conventions and security policies, ensuring consistency and compliance.
Automates account provisioning, reducing setup time and improving operational efficiency.
Allows auditors to access new accounts to prevent abuse and manage the environment footprint.

Implement Guardrails: AWS Control Tower’s guardrails provide guidance that is either Mandatory or Strongly Recommended. Guardrails are implemented via an IAM Service Control Policy (SCP) or an AWS Config rule and can be enabled on an Organizational Units (OU) basis.

Advantages:

Enforces security and compliance policies across AWS accounts.
Provides out-of-the-box best-practice policies that can be applied to all accounts.
Preventive guardrails prevent resources from being deployed that don't comply with policies.
Detective guardrails continuously monitor deployed resources to spot noncompliance.
Translates guardrails into granular AWS policies, ensuring adherence to best practices.

Next steps

Magic Beans, as a certified AWS Managed Services Provider (MSP), highly recommend leveraging AWS Control Tower to enhance your organization's cloud governance capabilities. AWS Control Tower simplifies the management of your AWS environment by orchestrating multiple AWS services on your behalf while maintaining the security and compliance needs of your organization.

As MSP, we have extensive experience and expertise in implementing and managing AWS Control Tower for organizations of various sizes and complexities. We can help you design and implement customized Control Tower architecture tailored to your specific needs. Let’s talk about them!

Conclusion

AWS Control Tower is a powerful tool for managing multi-account AWS environments. It provides a streamlined process for setting up new accounts, implements guardrails for security and compliance, and allows for customizations to meet specific needs. Its capabilities make it an ideal choice for organizations seeking to efficiently manage and govern their AWS resources.