Managed services that allow delegated administration

What are the key advantages of using managed services with delegated administration in AWS?

The key advantages include scalability, reduced operational burden, expertise, compliance, and security. Managed services allow organizations to delegate the heavy lifting of infrastructure management to AWS experts. They can scale resources up or down as needed, ensure best practices are followed for security and compliance, and focus their team’s efforts on core business functions rather than IT infrastructure.

Can you describe what AWS Organizations is and how it supports delegated administration?

AWS Organizations is a service for managing and governing multiple AWS accounts. It supports delegated administration by allowing organizations to centrally manage policies, automate account creation, and group accounts into organizational units for easier administration. It offers features like Service Control Policies (SCPs) to enforce permissions across the organization.

How does AWS Control Tower facilitate delegated administration for organizations?

AWS Control Tower automates the setup of a well-architected multi-account AWS environment. It simplifies delegated administration by setting up new accounts with pre-configured security and compliance controls based on best practices, providing a central dashboard for oversight, and establishing guardrails to maintain compliance and governance as the organization scales.

Which AWS feature would you use to automate cross-account permissions management for resources and how?

I would use AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM) to automate cross-account permissions management. It allows you to share AWS resources like Subnets, License configurations, or Route 53 Resolver rules with other AWS accounts or within your AWS Organization, ensuring consistent and automated access controls across accounts.

Explain how AWS Managed Services (AMS) supports the concept of delegated administration for an organization’s infrastructure.

AWS Managed Services (AMS) offloads the daily infrastructure operations to AWS, supporting delegated administration through incident monitoring, response, and resolution, OS and database maintenance, and providing a secure and compliant AWS Landing Zone. AMS automates common activities, such as change requests, monitoring, patch management, security, and backup services, and provides full-lifecycle services to provision, run, and support infrastructure.

What AWS service would you use to delegate administrative capabilities for user provisioning and access management, and why?

I would use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) combined with AWS Single Sign-On (SSO) for delegating administrative capabilities for user provisioning and access management. IAM provides fine-grained control over AWS resources, while AWS SSO simplifies user access, allowing delegated administrators to provision users and manage permissions based on predefined permission sets for accounts and applications.

Can you explain the purpose and benefits of using AWS Service Catalog in a delegated administration model?

AWS Service Catalog allows organizations to create and manage catalogs of IT services that are approved for use on AWS. In a delegated administration model, AWS Service Catalog helps by providing a controlled way for users to provision pre-approved products, which helps maintain compliance, standardize deployments, and manage resource creation effectively and uniformly at scale.

How does AWS Firewall Manager contribute to the oversight of security in a delegated administration setup?

AWS Firewall Manager simplifies the administration of AWS WAF rules, AWS Shield Advanced protections, and Amazon VPC security groups across multiple AWS accounts. It allows central security administration, ensuring consistent security policy application across an entire organization and easing the burden of individual account management. This is particularly valuable in a delegated administration setup.

Describe a scenario in which you would use AWS Systems Manager to delegate administrative tasks and ensure compliance across an AWS environment.

AWS Systems Manager would be used to delegate administrative tasks such as patch management, automation, and configuration tracking. For example, in a large organization, Systems Manager can automate the deployment of patches to EC2 instances or on-premises servers, apply state management to ensure instances are in a designated state, and monitor compliance with desired configurations.

How would you set up delegated administration for a third-party security service within AWS, ensuring the service has the necessary permissions to function?

To set up delegated administration for a third-party security service within AWS, I would first subscribe to the service from AWS Marketplace and then use AWS IAM to create a role with the necessary permissions that the service requires to function. This service role would then be assumed by the third-party service to perform its tasks, ensuring it has the access it needs without excessive permissions.

In what ways does delegated administration through AWS help with regulatory compliance and reporting requirements?

Delegated administration through AWS helps with regulatory compliance and reporting by centralizing the management of security controls and policies. This allows for consistent application of compliance measures, as well as streamlined logging and monitoring that can be leveraged for audit purposes. Services like AWS Config and AWS CloudTrail facilitate tracking and recording compliance-relevant actions for easier reporting.

What is the AWS Delegated Administrator feature within AWS Organizations, and when might you use it?

The AWS Delegated Administrator feature within AWS Organizations allows an organization’s management account to delegate certain administrative responsibilities to other accounts within the organization. This is used to enable a member account to manage specific AWS services across the entire organization on behalf of the management account, allowing for distributed management responsibilities while still keeping centralized control. One might use it to delegate admin tasks like Security Hub or GuardDuty to specialized security teams or accounts.