AWS governance involves managing your AWS cloud environment to ensure security, compliance, and cost-efficiency. It encompasses policies and best practices that mitigate security breaches, regulatory non-compliance, and unexpected costs.

Key takeaways

• AWS governance is essential for securely managing cloud resources and ensuring compliance, particularly for heavily regulated sectors like finance and healthcare.
• Key components of AWS governance include AWS Organizations for account management, IAM for user control, and AWS Control Tower for automated policy enforcement.
• Best practices for effective AWS governance involve establishing clear policies, conducting regular audits, and leveraging automation tools to streamline compliance efforts.

Understanding AWS governance

Governance in AWS refers to the comprehensive management, monitoring, and control of cloud resources. It ensures your AWS environment remains secure, compliant, and cost-effective. At its core, AWS governance involves implementing a set of policies, controls, and best practices designed to manage your AWS environment efficiently.

Good governance in AWS is not just about adhering to regulations and standards; it also brings tangible benefits such as operational efficiency, resource optimisation, and effective risk management.

In sectors like finance and healthcare, where regulatory requirements are stringent, the importance of governance cannot be overstated, so establishing a governance framework that includes policies for cloud service consumption and compliance is crucial.

Fortunately, AWS provides a suite of tools to facilitate governance. Services like AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Config, CloudTrail, and Security Hub are integral to implementing compliance and governance. These services help manage user access, monitor resource configurations and budgets, track changes, and ensure security standards are met.

Without proper governance, AWS environments will work, but they can become disorganised, insecure, and expensive. That is why, in today’s cloud-centric world, utilising AWS for governance is a necessity.

How does AWS help with governance and compliance?

AWS has developed a robust framework to support governance and compliance, ensuring that organisations can manage risk, meet regulatory requirements, and maintain operational control in the cloud.

One of the cornerstones of this framework is AWS Organizations, which allows businesses to centrally manage and apply governance policies across multiple AWS accounts. This centralisation ensures consistency in security, compliance, and cost controls.

Identity and Access Management (IAM) is another critical component. IAM enables fine-grained control over user permissions and resource access, while IAM Access Analyzer helps identify unintended access. Service Control Policies (SCPs) enforce compliance and security across all accounts within an organisation.

AWS also supports a wide range of compliance frameworks and certifications, including ISO 27001, SOC 1/2/3, GDPR, HIPAA, FedRAMP, and PCI DSS. Through AWS Artifact, users can access compliance reports to help demonstrate regulatory alignment.

Monitoring and auditing are facilitated by services like AWS CloudTrail, which provides detailed logging of user activity and API calls. AWS Config continuously evaluates the configuration of resources against defined policies.

Taking care of security and data protection is crucial in AWS governance. AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) allows the creation and control of keys used to encrypt or digitally sign data, while AWS Macie helps discover and protect sensitive data, providing visibility into data security risks. AWS Shield and Web Application Firewall (WAF) protect against external threats, supporting compliance with security standards.

Automation and policy enforcement are simplified with tools like AWS Control Tower, which sets up multiple accounts with preconfigured guardrails and policies. AWS Config Rules and Conformance Packs enforce compliance automatically, and AWS Systems Manager automates operational tasks in a secure way.

AWS Security Hub and Inspector offer centralised security posture management and vulnerability scanning, while AWS Trusted Advisor provides real-time recommendations for compliance and cost optimisation.

Curious about AWS cost optimisation? Read on:

• AWS cost reduction: a guide to lowering your cloud bill
• Cloud cost optimisation: how to reduce your cloud expenses and maximise ROI?
• Cloud Cost Optimisation services – save as much as 70% on your cloud infrastructure!

Key components of AWS governance

Effective AWS governance comprises several key components working together. Each of these components plays a crucial role in the overall framework.

AWS Organizations is fundamental for managing multiple AWS accounts and policies centrally. This service allows organisations to group accounts into units and apply policies at a high level, ensuring consistency and cohesiveness. Service Control Policies (SCPs) further enhance this by enforcing compliance and security standards across all accounts.

Identity and Access Management (IAM) is another cornerstone, providing fine-grained control over user permissions. IAM ensures that only verified users can access specific AWS resources, significantly reducing the risk of unauthorised access and adhering to the principle of least privilege (PoLP).

AWS Control Tower automates multi-account governance, making it easier to set up and govern a secure, compliant multi-account environment based on AWS best practices. This service simplifies the establishment of new accounts and enforces governance policies automatically.

AWS Config is indispensable for monitoring and auditing AWS resource configurations. It continuously tracks resource configurations and ensures they comply with defined policies. AWS Security Hub offers centralised security monitoring, standardising security findings and making it easier to integrate data from multiple sources.

Lastly, AWS Cost Management tools, such as AWS Cost Explorer and Cost and Usage Reports, help track and optimise spending. These tools provide visibility into cloud spending, enabling organisations to make informed decisions and avoid cost overruns.

What best practices should businesses follow for AWS governance?

Businesses must follow best practices tailored to their unique needs to achieve effective AWS governance. Establishing clear policies that define access to resources and resource management is a crucial first step. These policies guide cloud consumption and ensure compliance with internal and external standards.

Regular audits are essential for ensuring ongoing compliance with governance policies and regulations. Organisations should periodically review and adjust their governance strategies to accommodate evolving business needs and compliance auditing frameworks.

Continuous education is vital for keeping teams updated on compliance standards and evolving best practices. Establishing a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) can help manage cloud strategy and governance across different cloud environments, ensuring a cohesive approach.

Automating governance and monitoring processes is another best practice. Automation tools can streamline compliance efforts and enforce governance policies effectively, reducing the manual workload and minimising the risk of human error. AWS Security Hub can filter and group findings to help organisations prioritise security issues based on severity.

What tools can help businesses monitor AWS cloud governance?

Implementing governance in AWS isn’t about deploying a single tool, but about combining several services into a well-integrated, automated system. These services work together to ensure consistent control, visibility, and responsiveness across the entire cloud environment.

It starts with AWS Organizations, which provides the structural foundation for managing multiple AWS accounts in a unified way. Organisations often segment accounts by department, workload, or environment (such as development, testing, and production), and apply Service Control Policies (SCPs) to enforce global restrictions, such as blocking the use of specific services or regions. These guardrails apply before any user-level permissions are even checked, providing a consistent governance layer across all accounts.

Within each account, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) defines which users and services are allowed to perform which actions. IAM roles, permission boundaries, and group policies ensure that only authorised actors can access or modify resources, striking a balance between operational flexibility and security. This level of access control is essential to reduce the risk of misconfiguration or unauthorised change.

With the account structure and access rules in place, AWS CloudTrail takes over to log every API call and configuration change across the environment. This creates a detailed audit trail of who did what, when, and from where, serving as the backbone of accountability and forensic investigation.

These logs become especially useful when combined with AWS Config, which continuously monitors the configuration state of AWS resources. If a security group, for example, is altered to allow inbound traffic on port 22 from any IP address, Config will detect that the new configuration violates established compliance rules. It also links that event to CloudTrail data, revealing who made the change and exactly when it happened.

Once detected, the issue is passed on to AWS Security Hub, which aggregates findings from AWS Config and other tools like Amazon GuardDuty, Inspector, and Macie. Security Hub consolidates these alerts into a single view, assigning severity levels and identifying whether the problem is isolated or part of a broader pattern. This correlation helps security teams prioritise what needs attention first.

Finally, the system moves from detection to action. Amazon EventBridge listens for compliance violations or suspicious activity and triggers predefined responses. For instance, if an open port is flagged by AWS Config, EventBridge can call a Lambda function to automatically revert the security group to its previous, compliant state. In more advanced setups, AWS Systems Manager might be used to run remediation workflows or execute secure scripts across affected instances. Teams can also receive real-time notifications through Amazon SNS.

Together, these services form a responsive, scalable governance model that not only monitors and reports on cloud activity but also reacts to violations in real time – minimising risk, enforcing compliance, and freeing teams from manual intervention.

Challenges in AWS governance

Despite the robust tools and services provided by AWS, organisations often face challenges in implementing effective governance.

Unclear policies and a lack of effective audits can hinder governance efforts. Without clear guidelines and regular assessments, maintaining compliance and security becomes a daunting task.

Automation tools can help streamline compliance policies efforts and enforce governance policies effectively. However, the implementation of these tools requires careful planning and expertise.

Balancing security and operational efficiency is another challenge. Organisations must find the right balance between stringent security measures and the need for agile, flexible operations, including the use of command line tools, compliance programs, and compliance requirements.

One recommended approach is to define clear roles and responsibilities using IAM roles and permissions boundaries, enabling least-privilege access without obstructing developer productivity. Additionally, setting up isolated development, staging, and production environments can help enforce governance without slowing down innovation.

Managing multiple accounts and ensuring compliance across them adds another layer of complexity. AWS Organizations and Service Control Policies (SCPs) can help, but they require a comprehensive understanding and careful implementation.

As a best practice, organisations should use a multi-account strategy based on workload, business unit, or environment type – each account governed by centrally managed SCPs. These should be combined with AWS Config rules, AWS CloudTrail logging, and Security Hub findings across all accounts, aggregated via AWS Organizations and managed through delegated administrator accounts. This ensures better visibility, streamlined operations, and consistent policy enforcement.

Additionally, data residency requirements and internal policies can complicate the governance landscape. Tagging strategies, region-specific controls, and encryption policies should be clearly defined to meet both regulatory and internal compliance needs from the outset.

AWS governance done right with Future Processing

Future Processing helps businesses implement AWS cloud governance to tackle challenges like multi-account management, compliance, cost control, and automation. By combining real-time support with AWS services, we ensure governance policies are consistently applied and monitored.

As an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner and Cloud Operations Competency Partner (one of just 9 in Poland), we offer expert AWS FinOps consulting. From cost governance and automation to right-sizing and budgeting strategies, we help you reduce waste and maximise efficiency. Thanks to our access to funding programmes, MAP, and AWS resale discounts, we also pass on real savings to your business.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some effective strategies for reducing AWS costs?

To effectively reduce AWS costs, focus on right-sizing your resources, consistently monitoring and tagging them, optimising storage solutions, and implementing auto-scaling to align with actual demand. These steps will help you manage expenses efficiently. Read more: FinOps: best practices and tips to manage Cloud costs

How do AWS Cost Management tools help reduce cloud expenses?

AWS Cost Management tools effectively reduce cloud expenses by providing transparency in resource usage, enabling businesses to avoid overspending, and facilitating optimisation through real-time cost tracking, budgeting, and forecasting.

What is AWS Cost Management?

AWS Cost Management is a suite of tools that assists businesses in tracking their expenditures and optimising costs efficiently. Utilising these tools can lead to more informed spending decisions and better financial control.

What common mistakes do businesses make that increase AWS costs?

Businesses commonly increase their AWS costs by over-provisioning resources, leaving unused EC2 instances running, neglecting orphaned snapshots and volumes, and not automating cloud resource management. Addressing these issues can significantly optimise expenditures.

What is right-sizing in AWS?

Right-sizing in AWS involves optimising cloud resources to align with actual workload demands, thereby minimising costs by eliminating unnecessary resources. It is crucial for enhancing efficiency and ensuring that resource usage is proportional to need.