Multiple AWS Accounts: An organisation structure

Why would we want multiple AWS accounts?

• Organisational structure
• Security
• To create secure pipelines
• Note: Larger organisations may want to create a logging account

Setting up your accounts

Step 1: Create your account by clicking on this AWS Sign up URL. Remember to set an impossibly hard password, saved into your Password Manager.

Step 2: Once successfully signed in, click on ‘Security credentials’ on the top right corner of the home page (see images below). This is required to set up your 2MFA (ensures your AWS account is always secure against unauthorised log ins).

Step 3: Go to the organisation and click “create organisation”. This will become the main account from which you can create your sub-accounts (see below).

Step 4: Once your organisation has been created, you can now create one or more additional AWS accounts. Note: It is very important that you tag each account whilst you add them (this helps make account billings easier to track i.e. whenever you receive an AWS bill in future, the tag tells you which account’s usage you are being billed for!)

Securing your Sub Accounts

Step 1: Take note of the email address from the organisation tab

Step 2: Sign out of AWS and attempt to sign in using the email attached to the sub account

Step 3: Click forgotten password… Set a new (really really) secure password and save it in your Password Manager

Step 4: Now sign into the account using the email and password. Immediately before doing anything else setup the 2MFA as you did before.

Step 5: Repeat this for each Sub Account