Use case
Ensuring Compliance and Security with Environment-Wise Account Separation
- Zinkal Desai
About the Customer
BrightPay revolutionizes online payment card management with its card-on-file solution, enabling users to effortlessly save and update their payment cards across various online accounts and subscriptions. By centralizing card updates, users can conveniently manage their payment information without leaving their preferred platforms. This seamless integration benefits merchants and banks by providing them enhanced control over the card-on-file process, driving increased card usage, spending, and transaction volume from the outset.
Customer Challenge
BrightPay faced a significant challenge with both development and production environments residing under a single AWS account. This setup posed a problem in meeting PCI compliance and enforcing strict access controls for their developers. The main concerns were ensuring that the production environment remained secure and compliant with PCI DSS requirements while still providing developers access to the development environment for testing and deployment purposes.
The critical requirement was to implement the principle of least privilege, maintain a clear separation of duties, and prevent developers from accidentally or maliciously accessing or modifying production systems.
Solution
IAMOPS helped BrightPay overcome these challenges by separating the AWS accounts for the development and production environments. This segregation allowed BrightPay to adhere to PCI compliance and implement stricter access controls. The key components of the solution included:
1) Segregation of AWS Accounts:
- Separate AWS accounts for development and production environments were established, ensuring isolation and compliance with PCI DSS standards.
2) Access Controls:
- IAM roles and policies were implemented to enforce least-privilege access. Developers were only granted access to the development environment, while access to the production environment was strictly limited to authorized personnel.
3) AWS Well-Architected Framework:
- The architecture was designed based on AWS Well-Architected Framework principles, ensuring reliability, security, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and operational excellence.
4) Synchronization Between Accounts:
- A mechanism to maintain synchronization between development and production environments was established. This ensured consistency in configurations and policies across both environments, reducing the risk of configuration drift.
5) Comprehensive Security Audits:
- Regular security audits were performed to identify and mitigate potential vulnerabilities. AWS GuardDuty was integrated for real-time threat detection.
6) Cost Optimization:
- AWS Cost Explorer was used for monitoring expenses, with additional strategies like rightsizing instances applied to minimize costs.
7) Robust Monitoring:
- Amazon CloudWatch was implemented for real-time monitoring, enabling early detection and resolution of potential issues.
Semantic Release Workflow
Results & Benefits
- Enhanced Security and Compliance:The separation of AWS accounts ensured that operational activities were isolated, meeting PCI compliance requirements. Access controls ensured data security and reduced the risk of unauthorized access.
- Improved Operational Efficiency:Synchronization between environments ensured consistency and reduced operational discrepancies. Developers were empowered to test and innovate in the development environment without affecting the production systems.
- Cost Optimization:Shutdown of the development environment during non-working hours helped optimize resource usage, leading to reduced overhead costs. Rightsizing strategies and monitoring further enhanced cost efficiency.
- Compliance and Audit Readiness:AWS Config was used for continuous compliance assessments, and AWS GuardDuty provided real-time threat detection, ensuring that the infrastructure met security and industry standards.
About IAMOPS
IAMOPS is a full DevOps suite company that supports technology companies to achieve intense production readiness.
Our mission is to ensure that our clients’ infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines are scalable, mitigate failure points, optimize performance, ensure uptime, and minimize costs.
Our DevOps suite includes DevOps Core, NOC 24/7, FinOps, QA Automation, and DevSecOps to accelerate overall exponential growth.
As an AWS Advanced Tier Partner and Reseller, we focus on two key pillars: Professionalism by adhering to best practices and utilizing advanced technologies, and Customer Experience with responsiveness, availability, clear project management, and transparency to provide an exceptional experience for our clients.
