AWS Config

AWS Config is a managed service from Amazon Web Services that records and evaluates the configuration of resources in AWS environments. It addresses the governance challenge that arises as cloud estates grow: organisations run many accounts and regions, resources are created and changed constantly by multiple teams and automated processes, and it becomes difficult to know what exists, how it is configured, how it has changed and whether it complies with security and regulatory policies. AWS Config’s approach is to maintain a continuously updated inventory of supported resources and a history of configuration changes, and to evaluate those configurations against rules that express the desired state. This provides an auditable record and early warning of drift from internal standards and external requirements.

Key capabilities include configuration recording and history, relationship tracking between resources, managed rules covering common best practices, custom rules written with AWS Lambda or Guard policy language, and conformance packs that bundle rules for frameworks such as CIS benchmarks, PCI DSS and HIPAA. Automatic remediation can use AWS Systems Manager documents to correct non-compliant resources, while aggregators give a consolidated view across accounts and regions in AWS Organizations. Advanced query lets teams search the current configuration state using SQL-like syntax. AWS Config integrates with AWS Security Hub, CloudTrail, Control Tower, Audit Manager, Amazon EventBridge and SNS for alerting, and data can be delivered to Amazon S3 for analysis. It is a fully managed, cloud-native service, so there is no infrastructure to deploy. Its users include cloud platform teams, security and compliance functions, auditors and DevOps engineers in organisations of all sizes operating on AWS, especially in regulated industries. Pricing is usage-based, starting from around USD 0.003 per configuration item recorded, with additional charges for rule evaluations; there is no free trial or free version in this listing.