WHY DO ENTERPRISES NEED AWS LANDING ZONE?

INTRODUCTION

AWS Landing Zone helps customers easily set up secure, scalable, multi-account environments based on the best practices. It is an orchestration framework for a foundational AWS environment. AWS Landing Zone provides a baseline to get started with multi-account architecture, identity and access management, governance, data security, network design, and logging. AWS Landing Zone saves time, cost, and effort by automating the setup of an environment for running secure and scalable workloads.

WHY DO ENTERPRISES NEED IT?

Cloud Adoption

Enterprise’s cloud adoption is increasing rapidly over time to accelerate digital transformation and keep pace with competitions. More and more applications/workloads are being moved to the Cloud every day.  It is essential to have a good cloud migration strategy and managed environment with the required security in place for these migrations to be successful. Research shows that 80% of cloud migrations fail, even after spending millions of dollars. Lack of effective strategies and tools can lead to higher costs, longer migration cycles, or even failure. 

Faster Cloud Migration

The first step in every cloud migration is setting up a multi-account AWS environment. It involves setting up configurations, security, VPC, logging, and enabling a set of other AWS services and settings to reach the baseline requirements. The traditional and manual setup of such a cloud environment from scratch following the security guidelines and best practices is cumbersome, costly, and time-consuming. 

AWS Landing Zone helps to automate these processes and quickly create a secure, scalable, multi-account environment based on AWS best practices. AWS Landing Zone is one of the best tools to consider while executing any large-scale migrations to the Cloud. 

Security & Best Practices

AWS Landing Zone sets up an initial security baseline through the creation of core accounts and resources. It comes with a set of pre-configured security functions. AWS Landing Zone allows enforcement of security at global and account levels. Coming with preventive and detective controls, AWS Landing Zone also supports, 

  • Creations of baseline security and governance policies
  • User authentication using IAM, secret key rotation, and MFA
  • Security accounts for auditors and break glass
  • SCP (Service Control Policies) 
  • Security baseline and governance policies

Automation

AWS Landing Zone automates account provisioning, networking, security, governance, etc. This automation of AWS environment setup using IaC (Infrastructure as Code) becomes a repeatable process for the enterprise with centralized control and monitoring options. 

Policy Enforcement 

It is crucial to set access controls by creating roles and policies to ensure that users with the correct access rights only get access to resources. AWS Landing Zone provides access control to users through IAM by enabling secret key rotation and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for added security and governance.

Cloud Networking

Setting up of cloud network is another challenge in cloud adoption. Proper design and implementation of a network are necessary to ensure availability, resiliency, and scalability. AWS Landing Zone helps to choose and set up the right networking services, tools, and architectures that suit your organization’s requirements.

Centralized Control & Management

While the business and systems grow, controlling the massive environment is a challenge to many organizations. AWS Landing Zone makes it easier and less error-prone to set up and manage multiple accounts for enterprises. It also provides centralized,

  • Account Management
  • Governance
  • Dashboards & Visibility
  • Logging (for CloudTrail and config logs)
  • Monitoring and Alerting (Notifications for the security group, sign-in failures, root logins, etc.)

Solution Extensibility

The AWS default Landing Zone deployment can be extended using customer-specific add-on services or solutions. These add-ons can also be managed and deployed centrally from the AWS service catalog. Based on business requirements, integration to other AWS services also becomes easier and seamless. By integrating to Git, AWS Landing Zone can create an Integrated DevOps Environment.

Compliance

Most enterprises require their system to be compliant with local and global regulatory frameworks like HIPPA, SOC, etc. AWS Landing Zone helps to enforce, set up, and comply with regulatory requirements.

SUMMARY

Today’s Cloud is Awesome in many aspects. But it is Complex. Studies show that 80% of the business are struggling to adopt the Cloud. AWS Landing Zone helps you start your cloud migration quickly and easily, following necessary best practices and security requirements out there in the industry. 

About The Author

Dr. Anil Kumar

VP Engineering, Cloud Control
Founder | Architect | Consultant | Mentor | Advisor | Faculty

Solution Architect and IT Consultant with more than 25 years of IT Experience. Served in various roles with both national and international institutions. Expertise in working with both legacy and advanced technology stacks and business domains.