Simplify Your AWS Infrastructure: How AWS Organizations Empowers Businesses
Tags: aws, cloud, cloudpractitioner, business
Published: 2023-06-17 06:23:44

Picture this! "A unified realm where the unruly landscape of AWS accounts transforms into a harmonious symphony of centralized governance, empowering IT teams to conquer operational challenges with grace and precision". That right there is fundamentally what AWS Organizations is all about. In this comprehensive article, we are going to delve into the core concepts and captivating capabilities of AWS Organizations, unravelling its role as a game-changer for IT businesses. We are going to explore the complexity of centralized governance, its impact on reducing operational overhead, and the transformative benefits it brings to the table. We'll navigate through the key components of AWS Organizations, including organizational units (OU), service control policies (SCPs), consolidated billing and more, highlighting how they collaborate in unison to unlock a realm of unparalleled control and compliance. Fasten your seatbelts and prepare for an enlightening journey as we seek to unlock the secrets of AWS Organizations, enabling you to navigate the cloud landscape with confidence and efficiency.

## What is AWS Organizations?

Permit me to shed more light on what AWS organizations is all about after having touched on it lightly in the introductory paragraph. Explaining it in a way that will swiftly bring you into an aha moment, AWS Organizations is an account management service that helps you organize and manage multiple AWS accounts. It acts as a central hub for controlling and governing your AWS resources across different accounts. Think of it as a powerful control panel that allows you to bring together and manage multiple AWS accounts under one umbrella. With AWS Organizations, you can set policies, enforce security standards, and manage permissions across all your accounts from a single place. It includes account management and consolidated billing capabilities that enable you to better meet the budgetary, security, and compliance needs of your business.

AWS Organizations helps you to programmatically create new accounts and allocate resources, simplify billing by setting up a single payment method for all of your accounts, create groups of accounts to organize your workflows and apply policies to these groups for governance. In addition, it is integrated with other AWS services so you can define central configurations, security mechanisms, and resource sharing across accounts in your organization.

The thought that is probably running amok in your mind as you read this is, "What are the central governance and management capabilities AWS Organizations offer?". Let me answer that for you with the following bulleted list of AWS Organizations' capabilities.

- It helps you automate AWS account creation and management, and provision resources with AWS CloudFormation Stacksets

- Maintain a secure environment with policies and management of AWS security services

- Govern access to AWS services, resources, and regions

- Centrally manage policies across multiple AWS accounts

- Audit your environment for compliance

- View and manage costs with consolidated billing

- Configure AWS services across multiple accounts

Now let's explore the key components of AWS Organizations.

## Organizational Units
Organizational Units (OUs) in AWS Organizations are a fundamental component that allows you to structure and manage your AWS accounts hierarchically. They are like branches on a tree, each representing a distinct division or department within your organization. They act as containers that hold AWS accounts, much like carefully arranged compartments within a jewellery box. OUs provide a logical and structured way to organize and manage your accounts, allowing you to group them based on teams, projects, or business units. Just as a conductor guides the symphony, OUs orchestrate the governance and management of your AWS resources, enabling you to harmonize policies, permissions, and compliance settings across multiple accounts. With OUs, you can cultivate a garden of secure and compliant AWS environments, where each branch thrives with its unique identity while still being part of a unified ecosystem.

OUs follow a hierarchical structure that allows you to organize and manage your AWS accounts in a logical and scalable manner. At the top of the hierarchy is the root, which represents the parent container for all other OUs and accounts in your organization. Below the root, you can create multiple OUs to represent different divisions, departments, or teams within your organization. Each OU can contain other OUs and individual AWS accounts. Policies and controls applied at higher levels in the hierarchy, such as the root or parent OUs, are inherited by the child OUs and accounts within them. This ensures consistency in governance, security, and compliance across your organization. You can also override inherited policies at lower levels if needed to accommodate specific requirements of individual OUs or accounts. This hierarchical nature of OUs allows for the effective delegation of administrative responsibilities and enables centralized control over policies and permissions. With this hierarchical approach, you can easily scale your AWS environment, adapt to changing organizational needs, and maintain a consistent governance framework.

Here are some key points to keep in mind when making use of OUs:

- When an account is removed from an OU, any policies applied to that OU will no longer be enforced on the account. Ensure that appropriate policies are assigned to the account or its new OU to maintain governance and compliance.

- OUs can have permission boundaries applied to restrict the actions that can be performed within an account. Carefully define and manage permission boundaries to ensure appropriate access and control over resources.

- OUs inherit policies from their parent OUs. This means that policies applied to a parent OU are automatically applied to all child OUs and accounts within them. Be mindful of this inheritance to ensure consistent policy enforcement.

Now onto Service Control Policies.

## Service Control Policies
Service Control Policies (SCPs) are a powerful tool for managing permissions and access control across multiple AWS accounts within an organization. They act as the vigilant guardians of your cloud kingdom. Like mighty sentinels, SCPs stand at the gates, enforcing strict access controls and governing the actions of your AWS accounts. They are the guiding lights that illuminate the path of security and compliance, ensuring that only authorized services and actions are allowed to traverse through your organization's domain. With the power of SCPs, you can craft the landscape of permissions, carving out a fortified fortress where risks are minimized, and unauthorized activities are barred. SCPs, like the conductor of a symphony, orchestrate harmony across your hierarchical structure, with policies flowing seamlessly from the highest levels down to the deepest roots. Their influence extends beyond individual accounts, spreading like a protective shield, shielding your organization from the dangers of policy violations. SCPs are the sculptors of control, enabling you to shape and mould your AWS environment with precision, aligning it with your security objectives and reigning over the vast expanse of your digital realm. I'm using such a high number of analogies just to put things into perspective for you.

SCPs enable access control at the organizational level. They allow you to define and manage fine-grained permissions for your AWS accounts. With SCPs, you can specify which actions and resources are allowed or denied for users, groups, and accounts within your organization. SCPs act as a tool to enforce security and governance policies across your AWS environment, ensuring that access is controlled and aligned with your organization's requirements. They provide a centralized way to manage and enforce access controls, allowing you to maintain a secure and well-organized AWS infrastructure.

SCPs enforce permission boundaries by defining the actions and resources that are allowed or denied at the organizational level. When an SCP is attached to an OU, it affects all accounts within that OU and any nested OUs. SCPs follow a "deny by default" approach, meaning that they deny access to actions and resources unless explicitly allowed. This allows you to define granular permission boundaries and restrict access to specific services or actions. By using SCPs, you can prevent certain actions from being performed even if an account-level IAM policy allows them. SCPs provide an additional layer of control beyond IAM policies, enabling you to enforce security and compliance requirements at the organizational level.

SCPs are evaluated based on an explicit deny hierarchy. When multiple SCPs are applied to an OU or an account, AWS evaluates them in a specific order. The evaluation follows a set of rules to determine access permissions. First, any explicit deny in an SCP takes precedence over allow rules, regardless of the SCP's location in the hierarchy. Secondly, SCPs applied to parent OUs are inherited by child OUs and accounts, unless explicitly denied at a lower level. Lastly, when multiple SCPs are attached to an OU or an account, the permissions are determined by the intersection of the SCPs. If any SCP denies access to a specific action or resource, it takes precedence. Only actions and resources allowed by all applicable SCPs are permitted, with denials taking precedence over allows. This evaluation process ensures that SCPs enforce a consistent and fine-grained access control model throughout the organization and its accounts.

It is important to note SCPs do not restrict or modify the permissions associated with Service-linked roles. Service-linked roles have their own permission policies that are managed by the respective AWS services, and they are not subject to the restrictions imposed by SCPs. This allows AWS services to function properly and perform their intended tasks without being hindered by SCPs. SCPs primarily apply to IAM users, groups, and roles, and they help enforce access control policies across accounts within an organization.

To cap this section on this section, here is an example of a Service Control Policy:

```json
{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Deny",
      "Action": "*",
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
        "StringNotEquals": {
          "aws:PrincipalArn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:root"
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ec2:Describe*",
        "s3:Get*"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}
```
In the example above, the SCP has two statements. The first statement uses the "Deny" effect to deny all actions on all resources, except for the AWS account with the root user ARN "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:root". This ensures that only the root user of that specific account can perform any actions. The second statement uses the "Allow" effect to explicitly allow the "ec2:Describe*" and "s3:Get*" actions on all resources. This allows users, groups, or roles within the account to perform these specific actions on EC2 and S3 resources. By combining "Deny" and "Allow" statements, you can create granular access control policies that define what actions are permitted and denied for different entities within an AWS Organization.

## Consolidated Billing
It is a feature of AWS Organizations that allows you to merge payments for multiple AWS accounts within your organization. It provides a centralized billing and payment solution, making it easier to manage and track costs across multiple accounts. Instead of juggling separate bills and payment methods for each account, you can bring them all together under one roof. Here's how it works:

Suppose you have multiple AWS accounts, maybe for different teams or projects. With consolidated billing, you can designate one account as the "boss" account, called the management account. This account will be responsible for paying the bills. The other accounts, known as member accounts, will be linked to the management account. When it's time to pay, AWS will send a single bill to the management account. This bill will include the charges for all the member accounts. It's like getting a single bill that covers all your expenses, making it easier to manage and track costs.

Consolidated billing is a handy tool for organizations with multiple AWS accounts. It brings simplicity to your financial management, helps you keep track of costs, and gives you a better overview of your AWS spending. It's like having a financial superhero that saves you time and money!

We are going to end this article by looking at some of the benefits of making use of AWS Organizations.

## Benefits of AWS Organizations
- AWS Organizations enables you to enforce consistent policies across your accounts, ensuring compliance with security, compliance, and operational requirements.

- It simplifies the process of sharing resources between accounts, making it easier to collaborate and manage access to shared services.

- With AWS Organizations, you can manage multiple AWS accounts and resources from a central location, reducing administrative overhead and improving operational efficiency.

- It allows you to consolidate billing and gain a comprehensive view of costs across multiple accounts, making it easier to manage and optimize your expenses.

- It provides a framework for automating the creation and management of accounts, making it easier to set up and manage new environments.

## Wrap Up
AWS Organizations provides businesses with a powerful resource kit for achieving centralized governance, cost management, and improved operational efficiency. By making use of the core components of AWS Organizations, businesses can effectively manage their AWS resources, enforce security and compliance standards, and streamline administrative tasks. With the ability to consolidate billing, share resources, and automate account provisioning, organizations can optimize their operations and focus on driving innovation and growth. By embracing this "AWSome" account management service, businesses can unlock the full potential of their AWS environment and lay the foundation for a scalable and secure cloud infrastructure. Leverage the power of centralized governance with AWS Organizations today and take your cloud management to new heights.