There is increasing complexity in the cloud environment today which calls for the need for effective management of its cloud resources and realization of compliance to policies. Cloud Custodian provides an open-source tool that has a framework and allows one to formulate and implement available solutions to the problem. Further in this article, we will describe how Cloud Custodian facilitates rather remarkably the management of policies, its features and use case, and the policies that should be followed when using it.
A cloud resource policy management tool named Cloud Custodian was created by Capital One’s employees and offers its users the ability to manage cloud resource policies in different cloud vendors, including AWS, Azure, and GCP. The main objective of Cloud Custodian is to facilitate the use of these policies in managing cloud resources determined by security, compliance, cost management, and resource management policies.
Cloud Custodian is an open-source cloud management tool hosted on GitHub, designed to facilitate governance and compliance across multi-cloud environments, including cloud custodian aws, cloud custodian azure, cloud custodian gcp, and cloud custodian kubernetes. It operates on a modular architecture, referred to as cloud custodian architecture, where users define resource management policies in YAML, allowing for automated tasks such as identifying non-compliant resources, optimizing costs by managing unused instances, and enforcing security best practices.
Additionally, cloud custodian terraform integrates with Terraform to enhance Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices, ensuring governance from the provisioning stage. With a vibrant community contributing to its development and extensive cloud custodian training resources available, Cloud Custodian empowers organizations to maintain visibility and control over their cloud infrastructures effectively while enhancing security and compliance.
Custom Actions
Cloud custodian allows extending events by creating actions, and these are conditional with the use of certain triggers. For e.g. a company may choose to implement an action that posts messages on the slack channel after some certain limitations in resources have been exhausted.
Event-Driven Automation
The cloud custodian solution can be configured and integrated with AWS Lambda or Azure functions for the purpose of cloud event management. This event-based strategy allows the implementation of policies in real-time whenever a change occurs within the cloud.
Multi-Account Management
In an instance where an organization has several cloud account structures cloud custodian implements management across several accounts. For e.g. it is possible to define policies that enable multiple accounts to host cloud resources and provide a view of all the accounts in a single location.
Resource Metrics
The cloud custodian employs resource metrics for policies that focus on cost optimization. Many other policies can also be implemented to reduce the number of underutilized overprovisioned instances over time.
Protection Elevated to New Heights: Implementing security policies with Cloud Custodian enables organizations to identify and mitigate the risks of wrongly configured elements.
Reducing expenditure on cloud resources: Organizations can minimize wasteful expenditure on cloud services because they can streamline the process of identifying which resources are not being used and even switching them off.
Regulatory Compliance: By functioning as a controlled checking device among the cloud resources, Cloud Custodian helps to eliminate the risk of chance regulatory violations on cloud-based systems.
Efficiency: Automating such practices through an application eases the workload on the IT departments, allowing them to focus on more important issues that are aimed at growing the business.
Fig 2: Multi-Account Security Governance as Code with Cloud Custodian on AWS
Before getting into details of Cloud Custodian, ascertain that the following are available:
Basic Knowledge of Cloud Services: In-depth understanding of the cloud service provider in use and its offerings.
Python: Since Cloud Custodian is purely a Python application, one must install Python on the system.
Cloud Resources: A person must possess the required credentials and permissions to use cloud account resources.
To install Cloud Custodian, you can use pip, the Python package manager. Open your terminal and run:
pip install c7n
This command will install the Cloud Custodian package along with its dependencies.
Set Up Credentials: For AWS, configure your AWS credentials using the AWS CLI:
aws configure
For Azure and GCP, refer to the respective cloud provider's documentation to set up credentials.
2. Create a Policy File: Define your first policy in a YAML file. Here’s an example that identifies EC2 instances that are not tagged:
3. Run the Policy: Execute the policy using the following command:
custodian run -s . untagged-ec2-instances.yml
This command runs the policy and stores the results in the specified directory.
Resource Cleanup: On-demand destruction of resources that are no longer in use permanently, such as EC2 instances or load balancers and mower costs.
Security Auditing: Locate and fix risks in security configurations, e.g., open security groups or overly permissive IAM policies.
Compliance Monitoring refers to the periodic evaluation of the available resources for the measures that are in place within the organization or any other applicable legislation, such as GDPR or HIPAA.
Tagging Enforcement: Ensure that every cloud asset is properly tagged for the appropriate cost management and control measures.
Resource Modification: Change current resources by given conditions e.g. when usage of instance types changes, they may differ.
This is a case where a financial services provider needed to better manage its cloud resources and remain compliant with the very stringent existing regulations. They decided to apply the Cloud Custodian to manage issues related to resource tagging, configuring security groups, and controlling costs.
Results:
Increased Compliance: The first three months saw the firm decrease the instances of misconfigured resources by 60%.
Cost Efficiency: The firm reduced its monthly costs by approximately 25% by using the system to automatically shut down dead resources.
As the popularity of an online shopping site skyrocketed, the use of cloud resources increased correspondingly and very rapidly. They also used Cloud Custodian to track policies for untagged resources and to configure S3 buckets.
Results:
A health service provider was under regulatory pressure, such as HIPAA, and was not supposed to expose any sensitive data on the cloud. Cloud Custodian implemented a system responsible for geographic access control, Eliminating orbital storage locations without encryption available for product storage.
Results:
Policy Adherence: The user could comply 100% with the HIPAA data protection policies on encryption.
Instead of relying on human labor to report compliance proportions, Cloud Custodian allowed these proportions to be reported almost automatically.
Leveraging AI and ML: As more businesses embrace the benefits of AI and ML, Cloud Custodian's resource optimization capabilities can be improved by incorporating predictive resource usage trends.
Increased Multi/Hybrid Cloud Adoption: Improvements in future releases may encompass additional cloud providers and/or other cloud services global policy management, providing users with better policy management.
Improved User Experience: Considering the fact that Cloud Custodian is mostly a CLI, there are chances that users may want to have a policy management GUI for more convenient interaction with the application.
Continuous Development from the Community: The future improvement prospects of Cloud Custodian bear in mind that this is an open-source project meaning there will be continuous enhancements.
Automation of Security Checks: More integration with CI/CD tools and DevOps practices will enable organizations to practice security and compliance even earlier in the development life cycle.
Define Clear Policies
When developing policies, try to be direct and precise where possible. Do not use overly general filters that could accidentally affect resources. Instead, narrow down each policy using appropriate criteria.
Test Policies in a Safe Environment
As much as policies want to go into production, they should first undergo testing in a staging environment. Doing so prevents surprises and ensures optimal performance.
Use Version Control
Ensure that you properly manage and store your policy files using some version control system (e.g., Git), which would be of assistance to the entire team in the surveying process. This practice also helps with audit trail and rollback capabilities.
Monitor and Review Policies Regularly
Consider performing another review of policy adoption and improvement every six months when there are changes in cloud usage and security in the organization. Additionally, monitoring policy performance should be instituted to determine policy effectiveness and make changes.
Integrate with CI/CD Pipelines
In yourself using policies by inferring the cloud, understand the structure and components of the cloud integration deployment to Davidson process on the implementation of the mechanisms of compliance policies to state policies while in production. This is preventing compliance and security issues from being out of scope till too late in the development phase.
Cloud Custodian is a policy enforcement engine that has a great utility for the effective management of cloud resources. Therefore, its adoption leads to enhanced security, lower expenses, and adherence to various regulations in the use of cloud infrastructures. Cloud Custodian is simple and rich, whether as a beginner or someone looking forward to bettering cloud management activities.
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