In this article, we will explore how AWS Config empowers organizations to enhance their management and governance capabilities, improve security, and more. Have you ever considered how to maintain a consolidated inventory of resources across your AWS accounts? Do you need to swiftly identify unencrypted resources within your AWS setup? Or perhaps you wish to review the historical modifications made to your resources and automatically evaluate their compliance status? Whether for centralized compliance, security, or thorough resource management, having comprehensive visibility into your cloud infrastructure is essential, and AWS Config is here to help. The benefits of AWS Config go beyond mere monitoring, as various AWS services, including AWS Control Tower, AWS Security Hub, and AWS Audit Manager, utilize AWS Config data to bolster their functionalities.
AWS Config is a fully managed service that enables you to inventory your resources and monitor their changes effectively. It provides a detailed overview of the configuration data for these resources, allowing you to meet a range of business objectives:
Achieve Visibility
Utilize AWS Config to discover resources in your AWS environment or third-party resources that can publish their configuration data into AWS Config.
Centralized Audit and Compliance
Employ AWS Config to continuously assess AWS resource compliance with standards (e.g., SOC, PCI, FedRAMP) and track any deviations over time. Furthermore, AWS Config can automate the remediation of non-compliant resources as part of your resource management strategy.
Cost Optimization
Identify cost optimization opportunities by using AWS Config to monitor resource configurations that may incur unnecessary costs.
Security Intelligence
Establish controls to identify vulnerable resource configurations with AWS Config and review past configurations to assess security posture at specific points in time.
Enabling Partner Solutions
Utilize outputs from AWS Config to seamlessly integrate with various third-party solutions. For example, you can feed data into a third-party configuration management database (CMDB) like ServiceNow through tools such as the AWS Service Management Connector.
To illustrate how AWS Config can address diverse customer needs, we will delve into a few use cases.
Understanding AWS Config’s Functionality
The initial step in efficient cloud management and governance is grasping what resources are operational within your environment. As teams operate workloads on AWS, they utilize resources that need tracking as the demand (and number) of these workloads escalates. The AWS Config recorder is the tool that facilitates this inventorying capability. AWS Config operates by activating a recorder that captures the state of your resources across your AWS accounts. This recorder detects any changes and produces a configuration item (CI), which represents a snapshot of the resource’s configuration at a given time. The richness of information contained in this snapshot is why numerous AWS services depend on data from AWS Config.
Customers can manage the AWS Config recorder flexibly, including the option to exclude specific resources or modify the tracking frequency, which is especially useful for bursty workloads or temporary resources. Make sure to collaborate with relevant stakeholders, such as security teams, regarding resource exclusions and recording frequency to ensure compliance. Additionally, consider any downstream dependencies with AWS services or partner offerings.
Deploying Appropriate Controls
AWS Config enables compliance evaluations for resource management. Suppose a customer must adhere to the NIST 800-53 compliance standard. This framework encompasses controls that the customer must fulfill to demonstrate compliance (see the NIST Control Catalog if interested). AWS Config provides multiple implementation options to assess resources across accounts and teams, offering varying degrees of flexibility.
The first option is through AWS Config rules. These rules evaluate resource compliance against your desired configuration settings for AWS resources. AWS Config compares your resources’ current state against these rules and flags any non-compliant resources. Customers can use pre-built AWS Managed rules or create custom rules. Teams can bundle multiple config rules and remediation actions into a single deployable entity called a conformance pack for efficient multi-account deployment. Instead of managing individual rules, customers can leverage the pre-built Operational Best Practices for NIST 800-53 Conformance Pack, which can be tailored and deployed organization-wide for centralized compliance management.
Rules and Conformance Packs can be deployed via the AWS Console, AWS CloudFormation, APIs, or Systems Manager Quick Setup. When crafting custom config rules, it’s advisable to utilize AWS Lambda or AWS CloudFormation Guard.
The second option is utilizing Security Hub security standards within AWS Security Hub. These standards consist of fixed collections of rules that automatically perform best practice checks against your AWS resources. They utilize AWS Config rules to evaluate your resources and provide a straightforward way to get started. If the compliance standard you require is already included in Security Hub, then the fully managed Security Hub service is the most efficient way to begin; however, these standards cannot be customized. If you need customization, deploying AWS Config rules and conformance packs directly within AWS Config is the recommended approach.
AWS Config can also automatically remediate non-compliant resources to maintain security posture. The configuration of AWS Config rules can include both manual and automated remediation. This automated workflow minimizes the time required to rectify noncompliance. It can be beneficial to gain visibility before executing corrective action. Customers can set up notification or ticketing mechanisms prior to enabling automated remediation. When ready, be sure to check out this blog on remediating noncompliant AWS Config rules for further guidance.
Achieving Centralized Visibility
AWS Config operates as a regional service. By default, the AWS Config data collected in an AWS account is only accessible within the account and region where it was gathered. However, customers often seek a centralized method to access this data. AWS Config aggregators facilitate this by enabling centralized viewing of configuration and compliance data across multiple AWS accounts, AWS Regions, or an entire AWS Organization.
To gain deeper insights into your current environment, an organization’s compliance team may find value in understanding metrics such as the number of Amazon EC2 instances in operation. For more insights, you can visit this helpful blog post here and learn more about AWS Config from experts at this source. Additionally, if you’re looking to enhance your knowledge further, check out this excellent resource for career opportunities here.
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