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Case Study 03

AWS Landing Zone at Enterprise Scale

Multi-account AWS architecture with Terraform and guardrails

October 20248 min readCloud
AWSTerraformHCLGitHub ActionsSecurity
Multi
Accounts
100%
IaC
Yes
CI-Gated
Yes
SCP-Enforced

A multi-account AWS architecture designed for enterprise compliance and security. Uses Terraform for infrastructure-as-code with Service Control Policies (SCPs) for guardrails.

This landing zone pattern separates workloads into isolated accounts while centralizing audit logging and security controls.

The Problem

The Challenge

Organizations need to balance developer agility with security compliance. A single AWS account becomes a security and blast radius risk as teams grow.

The goal was to create a reusable landing zone that enforces security best practices while allowing teams to work independently in isolated accounts.

The Approach

Architecture Design

Implemented AWS Organizations with separate accounts for dev, staging, production, and audit. SCPs enforce guardrails like preventing public S3 buckets and requiring MFA.

All infrastructure is defined in Terraform with CI/CD gates that prevent non-compliant changes from reaching production.

Technical Details

Implementation Details

Account Structure

Organizational Units (OUs) separate workloads by environment. Cross-account roles enable centralized operations without compromising isolation.

Security Controls

SCPs prevent dangerous actions at the organization level. CloudTrail logs are centralized in a locked-down audit account.

Challenges

Problems & Solutions

SCP Complexity

Challenge: Balancing security restrictions with developer productivity.
Solution: Iterative SCP development with developer feedback. Created escape hatches for legitimate use cases.
Result: Zero security incidents while maintaining deployment velocity.
Results

Results

The landing zone is production-ready and fully documented for reuse across organizations.

Multi
Accounts
100%
IaC Coverage
Yes
CI-Gated
15+
SCP Policies

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