Question

Difficulty: MediumMulti-Account Governance and Organizational Structure

A financial services corporation is establishing a multi-account compliance auditing architecture using AWS Organizations. The solutions architect needs to configure AWS Config at the organization level to automatically record resource configurations and evaluate compliance using custom rules. The architect decides to delegate administrative capabilities to a dedicated Security tooling account instead of using the Organizations management account for daily compliance management. Arrange the following steps in the correct logical sequence to successfully configure this delegated compliance monitoring setup.

  1. 1Enable trusted access for AWS Config using the Organizations management account.
  2. 2Register the Security tooling account as the delegated administrator for AWS Config from the Organizations management account.
  3. 3Create an organization-wide AWS Config aggregator in the registered Security tooling account.
  4. 4Deploy organization conformance packs from the Security tooling account to apply compliance rules to all member accounts.

Answer

The correct logical sequence is to first enable trusted access for AWS Config in the Organizations management account, then register the Security tooling account as the delegated administrator, followed by creating the organization aggregator in the Security account, and finally deploying the organization conformance packs from the Security account.
To successfully establish delegated administration for compliance monitoring, trusted access for AWS Config must first be enabled in the Organizations management account. Next, the management account registers the Security tooling account as the delegated administrator. Finally, from this delegated admin account, the organization aggregator is created to gather configuration details, and the organization conformance packs are deployed to apply the compliance rules across the member accounts.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Enable trusted access for AWS Config (config.amazonaws.com) from the AWS Organizations management account.
AWS Config is granted permission to call AWS Organizations APIs to retrieve account list and structure details.
This is a prerequisite for registering a delegated administrator. Without trusted access, AWS Config cannot interact with the Organization's members.
2
Register the Security tooling account as the delegated administrator for AWS Config from the management account.
The Security tooling account receives permissions to manage AWS Config settings and deploy resources across the entire organization.
The delegated administrator registration authorizes the member account to perform administrative tasks on behalf of the organization.
3
Create an organization aggregator within the registered Security tooling account.
A centralized dashboard is created that aggregates configuration history and compliance status from all accounts and regions.
Establishing the aggregation framework first ensures that compliance data generated by rules is immediately collected and visible.
4
Deploy organization conformance packs from the Security tooling account.
Config rules and remediation actions are automatically deployed and run in all existing and future member accounts.
Conformance packs contain the actual compliance rules that evaluate the resources, completing the configuration setup.

Key Concept

Delegated Administration in AWS Organizations
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