Audit & Compliance Controls in AWS Serverless

1. Introduction

Audit and compliance controls are essential for maintaining governance in AWS Serverless architectures. These controls ensure that applications and services adhere to regulatory requirements and best practices.

2. Key Concepts

• **Audit Control**: Mechanisms that monitor and log activity within your AWS environment.
• **Compliance Control**: Frameworks and guidelines that dictate how data should be handled to comply with laws.
• **Serverless Architecture**: A cloud computing execution model where the cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation of machine resources.

3. Audit Controls

Audit controls in AWS Serverless can be implemented using various AWS services. The primary components include:

1. **AWS CloudTrail**: Enables governance, compliance, and operational and risk auditing of your AWS account.
2. **AWS Config**: Allows you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources.
3. **Amazon CloudWatch**: Provides monitoring for AWS resources and applications, allowing you to log and track events.

Example: Enabling AWS CloudTrail

To enable AWS CloudTrail, follow these steps:

aws cloudtrail create-trail --name MyTrail --s3-bucket-name my-trail-bucket --is-multi-region-trail
        

4. Compliance Controls

Compliance controls ensure that your AWS Serverless applications comply with various regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS. Key components include:

• **Identity and Access Management (IAM)**: Controls who can access what resources in AWS.
• **AWS Organizations**: Helps manage multiple AWS accounts and apply policies for governance.
• **AWS Artifact**: Provides on-demand access to AWS compliance documentation.

Example: Defining IAM Policy

Here’s how to define a simple IAM policy that grants read access to S3:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "s3:GetObject",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket/*"
        }
    ]
}
        

5. Best Practices

Implement the following best practices for effective audit and compliance controls:

1. Enable logging and monitoring for all AWS services.
2. Regularly review IAM roles and policies to ensure principle of least privilege.
3. Utilize AWS Config rules to enforce compliance automatically.
4. Conduct regular audits and penetration testing of your serverless applications.

6. FAQ

7. Conclusion

Establishing robust audit and compliance controls in AWS Serverless environments is vital for governance and regulatory adherence. By utilizing AWS tools and best practices, organizations can effectively manage and monitor their serverless applications.