Automating Security and Compliance to Streamline Resource Creation

Enhancing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) deployments with a focus on AWS security groups enables innovation and provisioning at scale.

CDW Expert

Earning credit for intelligent automation

53%

percentage of financial services executives who agree their fundamental business model needs to change to compete effectively¹

27%

percentage of organizations that used AI and automation across all four major security categories: prevention, detection, investigation and response²

Can a financial institution automate its security and compliance verifications?

A REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE

Enhancing IaC Deployments to Develop and Manage Security Groups

A consumer credit reporting agency was facing multiple challenges in developing and managing security groups. These included a lack of standardized templates, incomplete review processes, enforcement gaps, decentralization, manual approval processes and process delays.

To address these issues, the agency sought help enhancing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) deployments with a focus on security groups and compliance for Amazon Web Services (AWS).

THE TURNING POINT

Validating Security Groups in CI/CD Environments

CDW engineers and architects worked with key stakeholders to develop an automated solution for validating security group deployments in IaC continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) environments. The process included:

Leveraging verified base modules from Artifactory, a binary repository manager by JFrog, to ensure that security guidelines were enforced
Validating activities and collecting relevant USP policies by using Airbag scans and USP Python with lambda functions
Using a single identity and access management (IAM) role to manage service control policies (SCPs) and security groups while other activities were restricted
Deploying resources through the CI/CD pipeline if the changes were compliant
Logging all compliance issues to S3, setting up a CloudWatch alert for notification and creating a ServiceNow solutions (SNS) topic for escalation

Cloud expertise from CDW

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AWS and CDW

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THE RESULTS

Intelligent Security Automation Enables Innovation in AWS

A team of IT professionals collaborates at a computer, with a female member pointing to something on the screen.

CDW helped the credit reporting agency streamline resource creation and security group management in AWS by developing intelligent automation to compile and deploy new resources with smart security groups.

Here’s why it worked:

CDW teams provided myriad advanced resources and insight to orchestrate a customized solution.
The automated solution eliminates manual processes to streamline compliance within security groups.
Resource provisioning via IaC enhances innovation and secures provisioning at scale.

What’s next?

CDW’s expertise with IaC deployments for AWS helped the credit reporting agency automate its validation processes to overcome multiple challenges in developing and managing security groups.

“By implementing Terraform for IaC and automating security group deployments and compliance verification, the agency can leverage the full value of their AWS environment with a robust cloud security posture.”

Mike Wiseley, CDW Principal Consultant for Digital Velocity