Title

AWS re:Invent 2022 - How Commonwealth Bank Simplified the Compliance Journey (COP312)

Summary

Speakers: Eric Wessel, Principal Technologist for Security Compliance at AWS, and Rovan, Principal Technologist based in Sydney. Artem from Commonwealth Bank (via recorded video).
Topic: Compliance and security in the cloud, focusing on the journey of Commonwealth Bank.
Key Points:
- Importance of compliance in cloud operations, especially for regulated industries.
- AWS helps customers achieve compliance and assurance in a continuous and automated manner.
- Commonwealth Bank's journey to compliance involved transforming governance and compliance in the cloud.
- The bank developed a detective control framework called Curator using AWS services like Lambda and AWS Config.
- Challenges with Curator included scalability and the effort required to create and manage custom rules.
- AWS Config and conformance packs were introduced to address these challenges, providing automated compliance checks and remediation.
- AWS GuardDuty and Security Hub were leveraged for threat detection and aggregation of security findings.
- Commonwealth Bank adopted a "Trust but Verify" approach, enabling application teams to operate in a self-service manner while ensuring compliance.
- The bank achieved deployment velocity, visibility, reporting, and reduced engineering time through AWS services.
- AWS responded to Commonwealth Bank's feedback by enhancing services and reducing costs.

Compliance as Code: The shift towards codifying compliance is critical for scalability and speed, allowing for automated deployment of controls across multiple accounts.
AWS Config and Conformance Packs: These tools are essential for managing compliance at scale, with conformance packs providing immutable rules that ensure consistent compliance across an organization.
Automated Remediation: AWS services enable automated responses to non-compliant resources, reducing the need for manual intervention and streamlining the compliance process.
Threat Detection and Security Monitoring: AWS GuardDuty and Security Hub offer advanced threat detection and a centralized view of security findings, enhancing an organization's security posture.
Customer Feedback and AWS Service Improvement: AWS's responsiveness to customer feedback, such as Commonwealth Bank's, leads to service enhancements and cost reductions, demonstrating AWS's commitment to customer-centric innovation.
Cultural Shift in Accountability: The implementation of real-time compliance checks and visibility tools has led to a cultural shift within Commonwealth Bank, increasing accountability among application teams.
Cost Optimization: AWS's willingness to review pricing in response to customer needs shows a partnership approach to service provision, helping customers like Commonwealth Bank optimize costs while maintaining high security and compliance standards.