Separate workloads using accounts

Establishing clear isolation between different environments (such as production, development, and test) and workloads is critical to reducing risks. A multi-account strategy is recommended to provide an effective security boundary, ensuring isolation for security, billing, and access controls.

1. Use a multi-account strategy: Create separate accounts for different environments (production, development, test) and workloads to isolate resources and reduce the risk of unauthorized access or lateral movement between environments.
2. Implement guardrails: Apply consistent guardrails across all accounts using AWS Organizations, Service Control Policies (SCPs), and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). This ensures that security and governance standards are enforced across all workloads.
3. Ensure account-level billing isolation: Separate accounts also help ensure clear billing boundaries, allowing for granular tracking and cost management by workload or environment. This is critical for financial accountability and optimizing resource usage.
4. Limit cross-account access: Enforce strict cross-account access controls by leveraging IAM roles and policies. Ensure that only necessary resources are shared between accounts, and all communication follows the principle of least privilege.
5. Use dedicated security accounts: Establish a dedicated security account to centralize logging, monitoring, and security tooling. This helps isolate security functions from other workloads, adding an additional layer of protection.

Supporting Questions:

• How are workloads and environments separated at the account level?
• What policies are in place to manage access and governance across accounts?
• How do you enforce isolation for both security and billing purposes?

Roles and Responsibilities:

Cloud Security Architect:

Responsibilities:

• Design and implement the multi-account strategy.
• Define and enforce security guardrails across accounts.
• Manage access controls for cross-account interactions.

Cloud Administrator:

Responsibilities:

• Set up and configure AWS Organizations and SCPs.
• Ensure appropriate IAM roles and policies are applied to each account.

Artefacts:

• Account Separation Policies: Documentation outlining the rules and policies for isolating workloads and environments across accounts.
• Service Control Policies (SCPs): Guardrails enforced at the organization level to maintain security and governance.
• Billing Reports: Granular cost reports tied to specific accounts and workloads for tracking usage and managing budgets.