Why a Landing Zone is Essential
Teams that start in a single AWS account accumulate IAM, networking, and security debt that becomes exponentially harder to fix at scale. A Landing Zone establishes the right structure before you grow into it.
Blast Radius Containment
Account-level isolation means a security incident in one workload cannot propagate to another. AWS recommends a separate account per application lifecycle stage, a principle Control Tower enforces by default.
Auditor-Ready Evidence
AWS CloudTrail records every API call, every principal, every resource, organisation-wide and in an account workload teams cannot modify. Auditors get signed, immutable evidence without manual data collection.
Regulatory Compliance at Speed
AWS Config conformance packs map directly to HIPAA, PCI-DSS, NIST 800-53, SOC 2, and CIS Benchmarks. Violations surface as Security Hub findings within minutes of a resource creation, not at the next quarterly review.
Consistent Security Baseline
Service Control Policies (SCPs) sit above IAM; even an account administrator cannot override them. Guardrails like "deny public S3 buckets" or "deny disabling GuardDuty" become unconditional across every account.
Centralised Cost Visibility
AWS Cost Explorer aggregates spend across all accounts. Chargeback reports are available per OU, per account, and per tag, without granting workload teams billing access.
Accelerated Account Vending
Account Factory provisions a new AWS account with your security baseline, VPC, SSO permission set, and compliance guardrails in under 30 minutes, instead of weeks of manual setup.
Four Pillars We Build Into Every Landing Zone
Based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework and AWS Security Reference Architecture.
Security & Identity
Enforce least-privilege access and centralised identity from day one.
AWS Services
Outcomes
- Centralised SSO across all accounts
- Preventive guardrails via SCPs
- No wildcard IAM policies in production
- MFA enforced organisation-wide
Audit & Logging
Immutable, centralised audit trail across every account in your organisation.
AWS Services
Outcomes
- Every API call recorded and tamper-proof
- Configuration history and drift detection
- 7-year log retention for compliance
- Centralised log queries with Athena
Compliance & Governance
Automated detective and preventive controls aligned to industry frameworks.
AWS Services
Outcomes
- Automated compliance scoring dashboards
- Preventive + detective guardrails
- Evidence collection for auditors
- Continuous compliance posture monitoring
Networking Baseline
Secure, segmented network topology that scales with your organisation.
AWS Services
Outcomes
- No lateral movement between workload accounts
- Centralised egress inspection
- Private DNS resolution across VPCs
- Hub-and-spoke topology for shared services
Recommended Account Structure
AWS recommends treating accounts as isolation boundaries, not just billing containers. Our baseline OU design follows the AWS Security Reference Architecture.
Management Account
Root of AWS Organizations: billing, SCPs, and Control Tower only. No workloads ever run here.
Security OU
Centralised security tooling and read-only audit access for compliance teams.
Infrastructure OU
Shared services consumed across workload accounts.
Workload OUs
Isolated environments per business domain, with dev / staging / prod separation.
AWS Services We Configure
A complete landing zone spans over a dozen AWS services. We handle the integration, configuration, and ongoing guardrail maintenance.
Compliance Frameworks Supported
AWS Config conformance packs and Security Hub standards map directly to major regulatory frameworks. We activate and tune them for your industry on day one.