Determining when and how to deploy AWS Control Tower (for example, which services must be deactivated for successful deployment)

Can you describe the core components of AWS Control Tower and their individual roles within the service?

AWS Control Tower has several key components such as the Landing Zone, which automatically sets up a baseline environment with best practices; the Account Factory for provisioning new accounts; Guardrails for governance that enforce policy adherence; SSO for user access management; and a Dashboard for visibility into your AWS environment. These components work together to simplify the setup and governance of a multi-account AWS environment.

How does AWS Control Tower fit into an organization’s existing multi-account AWS setup, and what are the implications for current services and infrastructure?

AWS Control Tower is designed to work with AWS Organizations, enhancing your ability to manage and monitor multiple AWS accounts. For an existing setup, deploying Control Tower will implement its governance framework over all accounts. This may affect existing services as Control Tower applies certain preventative and detective guardrails that might alter configurations. It is important to understand the impact of these guardrails and to follow AWS recommendations to prepare accounts before deployment.

What is a Landing Zone in AWS Control Tower, and why is it critical for successful deployment?

A Landing Zone in AWS Control Tower is a pre-configured, secure, and compliant multi-account AWS environment. It is critical for successful deployment as it lays the foundation for your AWS infrastructure, ensuring that standard security and compliance policies are applied consistently across all accounts, and accelerates the setup process.

Before deploying AWS Control Tower, which existing AWS services or features should be deactivated or configured, and why?

Before deploying AWS Control Tower, deactivate or remove AWS Organizations SCPs (Service Control Policies) that may conflict with the implementation, disable any cross-account roles that go against the OUs (Organizational Units) structure of Control Tower, and ensure that there are no existing AWS Config Rules or AWS CloudTrail trails that could interfere with Control Tower’s setup. Doing this helps to avoid conflicts that might cause the deployment to fail or lead to unexpected behavior in the environment.

What are the key considerations when planning the deployment of AWS Control Tower in an environment with pre-existing AWS resources?

Key considerations include ensuring account compliance with Control Tower prerequisites, reviewing existing organizational units, backing up current account configurations, understanding how Control Tower’s guardrails will interact with your current resources, and having a rollback plan in case the deployment affects your environment unexpectedly.

Describe how preventive and detective guardrails in AWS Control Tower ensure security and compliance.

Preventive guardrails in AWS Control Tower work by enforcing certain configurations and blocking actions that could violate your compliance policies, while detective guardrails actively monitor for non-compliant resources and alert you when violations occur. Together, they help ensure that your AWS environment adheres to compliance and security best practices.

Can you explain how you could use AWS Control Tower to provision new accounts, and what the process entails?

Provisioning new accounts in AWS Control Tower is done through the Account Factory, which streamlines account creation while applying baseline configurations. The process entails defining an account configuration template, including organizational units, IAM roles, and network setups. When a request for a new account is made, Control Tower automates the provisioning process in line with the template to ensure consistency and adherence to security standards.

Is it possible to integrate AWS Control Tower with third-party security tools, and if so, how would you go about doing that?

Yes, it is possible. AWS Control Tower integrates with third-party security tools via AWS service integrations, such as sending findings to Amazon EventBridge, which can then trigger actions or notify external services. Additionally, you can use AWS Lambda functions to further customize how you interact with third-party tools.

What roles and permissions need to be in place before deploying AWS Control Tower?

Before deploying AWS Control Tower, you need to have the necessary permissions assigned to the IAM user or role performing the deployment. This typically requires administrator-level privileges. It’s essential to audit existing IAM policies and roles to ensure compliance with AWS Control Tower’s security policies and identity management configurations.

How can you monitor compliance within AWS Control Tower, and which AWS services are leveraged for this purpose?

Compliance can be monitored within AWS Control Tower using the Guardrails dashboard, which provides an overview of the compliance status of your resources. AWS services leveraged for this include AWS Config, which evaluates the compliance of resources with AWS best practices, and AWS CloudTrail, which logs and monitors account activity.

In the case of detection of non-compliant resources, what steps can be taken within AWS Control Tower to remediate issues?

Upon detection of non-compliant resources, AWS Control Tower will flag these issues. The steps that can be taken to remediate them include using automated remediation actions through AWS Systems Manager or Lambda functions, or manually correcting the configurations as per the suggestions provided by AWS Control Tower’s guardrails.

Can you describe a scenario where you would choose not to deploy AWS Control Tower, despite managing multiple AWS accounts?

One might choose not to deploy AWS Control Tower if their organization has deeply customized multi-account management systems already in place that would conflict with Control Tower’s automated setup, or if they need flexibility beyond the standardized guardrails and policies provided. Another scenario could be a company with minimal AWS resources and accounts, where the overhead of Control Tower does not make sense compared to simpler management solutions.