Setting Up AWS Accounts and Organization

An application or platform’s security is often characterized by features such as confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication, authorization, accounting, and non-repudiation. These features are grouped into the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) triad and the Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) triad. A solid grasp of these security features will facilitate better understanding and implementation of the AWS security concepts detailed in this book.

In this chapter, we will first learn about setting up the Identity and Access Management (IAM) service for a new AWS account along with account aliases and billing alerts. Then, we will learn to set up the AWS Organizations service that allows us to create and manage multiple AWS accounts from within a single management account. We will also learn about user management and Single Sign-On (SSO) using AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly known as AWS SSO), which centralizes identity creation and access management across AWS accounts and apps and is recommended for organizations of all sizes and types.

This chapter is slightly longer than the rest of the chapters in this book since it sets the stage for other chapters. We could skip the second and third recipes within this chapter regarding setting up AWS Organizations and IAM Identity Center and execute most of the recipes in other chapters on a standalone AWS account. However, if our goal is to work in an enterprise environment, it would be good to complete all the recipes within this chapter before proceeding with the rest of the book.

This chapter includes the following recipes:

• Setting up IAM, account aliases, and billing alerts
• Multi-account management with AWS Organizations
• User management and SSO with IAM Identity Center