This article outlines the process for activating AWS Config and deploying a sample AWS Config Conformance pack using HashiCorp’s Terraform. AWS Config offers essential features for configuration management, compliance, and auditing, which are vital for overseeing your resources and evaluating security posture at scale. It enables you to create managed rules—predefined, customizable criteria that AWS Config employs to assess whether your AWS resources adhere to established best practices.
An AWS Config conformance pack comprises a collection of AWS Config rules and remediation actions defined in YAML templates. These packs can be easily deployed as a single unit within an account and a specific region, or across an organization within AWS Organizations. AWS provides sample Conformance Pack templates aligned with various compliance standards and industry benchmarks, all of which can be downloaded from GitHub. This article focuses on the Conformance pack concerning Operational Best Practices for Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3). You can apply this method for other sample conformance packs or even your own.
Terraform is an open-source infrastructure as code (IaC) tool, akin to AWS CloudFormation, which is AWS’s native IaC solution. IaC refers to the approach of provisioning and managing cloud resources through template files that are both human-readable and machine-consumable. In February 2021, HashiCorp Terraform announced compatibility with AWS Config Conformance packs as part of its AWS provider version 3.28.0. If you intend to manage your AWS environment using Terraform, this article will guide you through the deployment of AWS Config and Conformance packs.
As illustrated in the diagram below, you’ll utilize a Terraform configuration to create a Conformance pack within your AWS account. This Conformance pack will implement rules related to operational best practices for Amazon S3:
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