Separate workloads using accounts

Establishing a multi-account strategy allows organizations to implement strict isolation boundaries between environments such as production, development, and testing. These boundaries enhance security and simplify management and billing processes.

Best Practices

Implement Multi-Account Strategy

• Establish separate AWS accounts for different environments (production, development, testing) to enforce isolation and minimize risk exposure.
• Utilize AWS Organizations to manage multiple accounts efficiently, applying service control policies (SCPs) to enforce security controls across your organization.
• Regularly review and audit account permissions and access controls to ensure compliance with least privilege principle.
• Leverage automation tools like AWS CloudFormation or Terraform to maintain consistent policies and configurations across accounts.
• Set up consolidated billing to simplify financial management while maintaining account separation for cost allocation and tracking.

Questions to ask your team

• Have you established separate AWS accounts for your production, development, and testing environments?
• What processes do you have in place to manage access between these separate accounts?
• How do you ensure that security controls are consistently applied across all accounts?
• What tools or automation are you using to monitor and secure the communication between accounts?
• How do you manage billing and cost allocation across these separate accounts?
• Do you have a regular review process to evaluate the effectiveness of your multi-account strategy?
• How do you handle incident response across the different accounts?
• What policies have you implemented to govern account usage and access controls?

Who should be doing this?

Cloud Security Architect

• Design and implement account-level separation for different environments (production, development, test).
• Establish common security guardrails across multiple accounts.
• Define access controls and policies for each account to ensure secure access management.

DevOps Engineer

• Implement automated processes for deploying workloads in separate accounts.
• Monitor the security configurations across accounts and ensure compliance with defined guardrails.
• Conduct regular reviews and audit of cross-account interactions to identify potential security risks.

Compliance Officer

• Ensure that the multi-account strategy adheres to organizational and regulatory compliance requirements.
• Review and approve security policies and procedures relevant to account-level isolation.
• Coordinate with the security team to perform periodic risk assessments and audits.

Security Operations Analyst

• Monitor security alerts and incidents related to account segregation.
• Evaluate threat intelligence and adjust security controls accordingly across all accounts.
• Engage in incident response activities for any security breach affecting multiple accounts.

IT Manager

• Oversee the implementation of the multi-account strategy.
• Facilitate communication between teams to ensure alignment on security best practices.
• Manage budget and resources for security tools used across accounts.

What evidence shows this is happening in your organization?

• Multi-Account Strategy Guide: A comprehensive guide outlining best practices for implementing a multi-account strategy within AWS. It covers account structure, security guardrails, and how to achieve effective isolation between production, development, and test environments.
• Security Policies Template: A template for defining security policies that enforce account separation and guardrails across different environments. This policy document helps ensure compliance and standardization in resource access and management.
• Account Separation Checklist: A checklist for verifying the implementation of account-level separation in an organization’s AWS environment. It includes key points to review for ensuring security, billing, and access isolation across workloads.
• AWS Guardrails Implementation Diagram: A diagram illustrating the architecture of AWS accounts structured into different environments (production, development, test) with corresponding guardrails. This visual representation aids in understanding the isolation boundaries established.
• Cost Optimization and Security Report: A report detailing the cost benefits and enhanced security achieved through the multi-account strategy. It includes metrics and findings from audits to demonstrate effectiveness in efficiency and isolation.

Cloud Services

AWS

• AWS Organizations: Helps you centrally manage multiple AWS accounts, allowing for account-level separation and application of policies across accounts.
• AWS Control Tower: Provides governance capabilities and best practice blueprints for multi-account setups, including security guardrails.
• AWS IAM: Enables fine-grained access control across accounts, facilitating secure permissions management.

Azure

• Azure Management Groups: Allows you to manage access, policy, and compliance across multiple subscriptions, providing a separation of environments.
• Azure Policy: Enables you to create, assign, and manage policies to enforce compliance and guardrails in your multi-account environment.
• Azure Active Directory: Offers identity management and access control capabilities to manage users and permissions across environments.

Google Cloud Platform

• Google Cloud Resource Manager: Allows you to manage your Google Cloud resources across multiple projects, providing a hierarchical organization and separation of workloads.
• Google Cloud IAM: Enables you to manage access control and permissions for users across multiple projects and environments.
• Google Cloud Organizations: Provides a way to manage billing and policies for multiple projects and enables clear separation between environments.

Question: How do you securely operate your workload?
Pillar: Security (Code: SEC)