Regulatory Reporting on AWS: Best Practices

• Why Compliance Matters: Non-compliance can lead to hefty fines (e.g., Goldman Sachs' $2.9B fine in 2020) and reputational damage.
• Key AWS Tools for Compliance:
  • AWS Artifact: Access compliance reports.
  • Amazon GuardDuty: Detect threats.
  • AWS Config: Monitor resource compliance.
  • Amazon Macie: Protect sensitive data.
• Best Practices:
  • Align AWS services with regulations (e.g., use CloudTrail for audit trails).
  • Automate compliance in CI/CD pipelines with tools like AWS CodePipeline.
  • Secure data with encryption (AWS KMS, CloudHSM).
  • Monitor compliance using AWS Config and Security Hub.
• Results: Examples like Capital One show 20% faster reporting and 30% lower infrastructure costs after migrating to AWS.

AWS offers scalable solutions to streamline compliance, automate processes, and manage risks effectively. Keep reading for step-by-step guidance on leveraging AWS for regulatory reporting.

Automating Compliance for Financial Institutions

Core Compliance Steps for AWS

Financial institutions need to ensure their AWS usage aligns with regulatory requirements. Here's how to turn AWS tools and strategies into actionable steps.

Aligning AWS Services with Regulations

To meet regulatory standards, pair specific AWS services with compliance needs. Here's a quick guide:

Understanding AWS Shared Responsibility

The AWS Shared Responsibility Model outlines who handles what when it comes to security and compliance [4]. AWS ensures the cloud infrastructure is secure ("security of the cloud"), while customers are in charge of securing their own data and configurations ("security in the cloud").

Here’s what financial institutions are typically responsible for:

• Data encryption: Encrypting data both at rest and during transit.
• Access control: Setting up IAM roles and permissions for users.
• Network security: Managing VPCs, security groups, and firewalls.
• Compliance monitoring: Using AWS Config to set rules and trigger alerts.

This division of responsibilities supports the security measures discussed earlier in the Architecture section.

AWS Artifact Compliance Reports

AWS Artifact simplifies access to compliance documentation. It centralizes reports, helping institutions stay on top of compliance requirements and maintain evidence of AWS's compliance status.

To get the most out of AWS Artifact:

• Review compliance reports monthly.
• Customize reports as needed.
• Organize and store evidence in a structured way.

The platform also tracks agreements like Business Associate Agreements (BAAs), ensuring everything is documented effectively.

AWS Architecture for Regulatory Reports

When designing systems for regulatory reporting, it's essential to integrate compliance requirements directly into your AWS architecture.

AWS Well-Architected for Finance

AWS's Financial Services Industry Lens tailors its five key pillars to meet the needs of financial institutions:

Use AWS Control Tower to enforce standardized security controls across accounts. This ensures clear separation of development, testing, and production environments.

Data Security and Encryption

Secure your data with a layered encryption strategy:

• Data at Rest: Utilize AWS KMS for automatic key rotation and assign separate Customer Master Keys (CMKs) based on data classification.
• Data in Transit: Use AWS Certificate Manager for TLS certificates and AWS PrivateLink to secure communication within your VPC.
• Key Management: For complete control, AWS CloudHSM provides hardware security modules that meet FIPS 140-2 Level 3 standards [1].

Data Lake Setup for Reports

Build a scalable and audit-ready data lake architecture using Amazon S3 as the backbone. This approach supports financial reporting requirements effectively:

Enhance your setup with AWS Glue DataBrew for data preparation and AWS Lake Formation to manage access controls. Configure S3 bucket policies to enforce encryption and enable object versioning for audit compliance. Additionally, use S3 Intelligent-Tiering for automated, cost-effective storage management.

sbb-itb-d22037a

Compliance Process Automation

Automating compliance checks within CI/CD pipelines not only cuts down on manual errors but also speeds up reporting. This process works hand-in-hand with the data lake architecture mentioned earlier, ensuring governance rules are applied consistently and efficiently.

Compliance in CI/CD

Using AWS CodePipeline, you can set up automated compliance checks at every stage of development. These pipelines help maintain compliance standards while still achieving the 30% cost reductions seen in earlier AWS migrations.

With Security Hub integrations, you can create live compliance dashboards to monitor your infrastructure in real time.

CloudFormation for Compliance

Using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with CloudFormation ensures your resources are deployed consistently and meet compliance standards. CloudFormation templates can enforce settings like encryption, public access blocks, and versioning by default [3]. Additionally, AWS CloudFormation Guard lets you enforce policies as code, blocking any non-compliant deployments [2]. These practices align with the security principles in the Well-Architected Framework discussed earlier.

Data Tracking for Compliance

Strengthen data governance with the following tools:

Enable AWS CloudTrail to log detailed records of all data interactions. Combine this with DataBrew to automate data quality checks, ensuring your datasets meet compliance requirements.

Third-Party Risk Management

Automation helps ensure internal compliance, but financial institutions also need to confirm that external vendors meet necessary standards. This is especially crucial since 82% of organizations have faced incidents related to third-party risks in the past three years [4].

AWS Certification Review

To stay aligned with regulations, financial institutions should regularly review AWS compliance certifications. Key certifications include:

Once these certifications are reviewed, enforce internal governance using Service Control Policies (SCPs).

Setting Up Service Control Policies

SCPs allow you to enforce compliance by restricting non-compliant actions with specific permissions. Here's an example policy to ensure S3 encryption:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "DenyUnencryptedS3Puts",
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Action": "s3:PutObject",
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringNotEquals": {
                    "s3:x-amz-server-side-encryption": "AES256"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

For example, a major European bank reduced policy violations by 35% within six months of applying SCPs like this one.

AWS Config Compliance Monitoring

Beyond automated CI/CD checks, AWS Config offers ongoing resource monitoring. Use these essential AWS Config rules to ensure compliance:

Integrate these rules with AWS Security Hub for centralized monitoring and streamlined compliance management.

Summary

Quick Reference Guide

Here’s a quick look at key actions to put the strategies discussed earlier into practice:

Additional AWS Resources

To help maintain compliance, consider these AWS-native tools and resources:

AWS offers a wide range of tools and documentation tailored for regulatory compliance. For further details on infrastructure, visit the Data Center Directory at datacenterfuture.com.