A leading financial services organization in the Middle East partnered with stc Bahrain to modernize and govern its cloud infrastructure. Operating in a highly regulated environment, the customer needed to shift from fragmented cloud operations to a centralized, automated, and compliant AWS governance model.
This transformation not only enabled secure and scalable operations but also positioned the organization to meet evolving regulatory expectations with agility and confidence.
The Challenge
Prior to the engagement, the customer faced significant operational and compliance risks, including:
· Fragmented Multi-Account Environment: Disconnected production and disaster recovery environments lacked centralized policy enforcement.
· Manual Compliance and Audit Readiness: Audit preparations took 2–3 weeks and required extensive manual effort.
· Inconsistent Security and Access Controls: Manual access provisioning created delays and risk of unauthorized access.
· Policy Drift and Operational Inefficiency: Lack of standardized resource deployment created inconsistencies and audit complexity.
· Regulatory Gaps: Inability to meet central bank governance mandates and data residency requirements.
Our Solution
stc Bahrain delivered a full-scale AWS Cloud Governance solution built around automation, policy control, and financial operations management:
1. Centralized Multi-Account Governance
· Implemented AWS Organizations and Control Tower with organizational units mapped to business functions.
· Applied Service Control Policies (SCPs) for granular access and compliance control.
· Enabled secure IAM federation across accounts with role-based access.
2. Governance Automation
· Used AWS Config Organization Rules for continuous compliance monitoring.
· Deployed all governance as Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using AWS CloudFormation.
· Enabled real-time policy enforcement and audit log automation with AWS CloudTrail.
3. Observability and Monitoring
· Built a unified monitoring framework with Amazon CloudWatch, AWS X-Ray, and SNS for intelligent alerts.
· Integrated all alerts into compliance dashboards and audit workflows.
4. FinOps and Cost Governance
· Controlled spend with AWS Budgets, Cost Explorer, and policy-based tagging for cost attribution.
· Established automated reporting and budget guardrails for financial compliance.
5. Disaster Recovery (DR) Readiness
· Deployed a governance-compliant DR architecture across regions with AWS DMS, CloudWatch, and EventBridge for automated failover.
Key Benefits
• 97% Policy Compliance Across All Accounts
Through automated enforcement and centralized controls.
• 2–3 Day Audit Readiness (Down from 3 Weeks)
Enabled by real-time compliance tracking and automated evidence reporting.
• 92% Faster Access Provisioning
Reduced cross-account role creation time from days to hours.
• $50K+ Annual Cost Optimization
Achieved via resource tagging, budget enforcement, and elimination of non-compliant spend.
• 100% Governance Adherence During DR Scenarios
Ensured business continuity with policy-driven failover automation.
AWS Services Used
• Governance & Management
-AWS Organizations
-AWS Control Tower
-AWS Config
-AWS CloudFormation
-Service Control Policies (SCPs)
• Security & Identity
-AWS IAM
-AWS KMS
-AWS Certificate Manager
• Monitoring & Logging
-Amazon CloudWatch
-AWS CloudTrail
-AWS X-Ray
-Amazon SNS
• Cost Management
-AWS Budgets
-AWS Cost Explorer
-AWS Trusted Advisor
• Resilience & DR
-AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)
-AWS Backup
-Route 53 (for traffic management)
• Infrastructure & Automation
-Amazon EC2 / Auto Scaling
-Amazon RDS / ElastiCache / S3
-AWS Lambda
-Amazon VPC / Systems Manager
-Amazon EventBridge
Conclusion
This engagement showcases how stc Bahrain, as an AWS Partner, empowers organizations to operationalize cloud governance at scale. The solution enabled the customer to automate compliance, eliminate risk, and meet stringent financial sector regulations while unlocking operational agility and cost efficiency.
Contact our Cloud Governance specialists today at [email protected] to learn how we can transform your cloud operations through advanced AWS governance frameworks.
