Executive Summary
A leading Japanese financial institution partnered with our cloud consulting team to accelerate its cloud transformation by building a secure, scalable, and fully governed AWS Landing Zone. Leveraging Amazon Web Services, we delivered a robust multi-account foundation that enabled rapid workload onboarding, seamless hybrid connectivity, and enterprise-grade security-while meeting the bank’s strict regulatory and compliance requirements.
The result was a future-ready AWS environment that empowered application teams to innovate faster, without compromising governance, security, or cost control.
Client Overview
The client is one of Japan’s major banks, serving millions of retail and corporate customers nationwide. Operating large on-premises data centers in Tokyo and Osaka, the bank embarked on a cloud modernization initiative to support long-term digital innovation.
However, early cloud adoption efforts were fragmented across application teams, creating operational complexity and inconsistent security controls. The bank needed a unified AWS foundation that could scale securely while enforcing centralized governance.
The Challenge: Secure Scale in a Highly Regulated Environment
As a highly regulated financial institution, the bank required a cloud platform that balanced team autonomy with strict enterprise controls. Key challenges included:
- Establishing a standardized AWS Landing Zone aligned with financial-grade security requirements
- Enabling rapid, compliant AWS account provisioning at scale
- Enforcing preventive guardrails and network isolation across environments
- Integrating AWS securely with existing on-premises infrastructure
- Gaining visibility into cloud costs through consistent tagging and FinOps practices
The Solution: A Fully Automated, Enterprise-Grade AWS Landing Zone
Working as part of a multi-disciplinary delivery team, we designed and implemented a production-ready AWS Landing Zone using AWS Control Tower as the governance backbone and Account Factory for Terraform (AFT) to automate account provisioning.
Infrastructure delivery was standardized and automated using Terraform Enterprise, integrated with GitLab CI/CD pipelines and AWS-native services such as CodeBuild and CodePipeline. This approach ensured consistent, auditable, and policy-compliant deployments across the organization.
Enterprise Governance & Security at Scale
- Implemented Service Control Policies (SCPs) to enforce preventive security guardrails across all AWS accounts
- Established strong network segmentation at both the account and VPC levels
- Delivered an optimized account vending process capable of provisioning fully configured AWS accounts in just 15–20 minutes, including networking, security baselines, and organizational controls
- Applied standardized security configurations to meet regulatory and internal compliance requirements
Hybrid Networking Built for Performance and Reliability
- Deployed AWS Direct Connect to provide secure, low-latency connectivity between AWS and on-premises data centers in Tokyo and Osaka
- Automated VPC provisioning for application accounts, ensuring consistent subnet design, routing policies, and security group standards
This hybrid architecture enabled application teams to migrate and modernize workloads without disrupting existing business operations.
Security, Identity & Encryption Foundations
In collaboration with the bank’s internal security teams, we developed reusable Terraform modules aligned with enterprise security standards, including:
- AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for centralized encryption and key lifecycle management
- AWS Secrets Manager for secure handling of sensitive credentials
- AWS Private Certificate Authority (PCA) to support internal PKI requirements
These capabilities were embedded directly into the Landing Zone, ensuring security was automated, enforced, and repeatable by design.
FinOps Enablement & Cost Transparency
Our FinOps engagement helped the bank take control of cloud spend from day one:
- Enforced mandatory tagging policies to enable accurate cost allocation by application and business unit
- Delivered improved visibility into AWS consumption through structured cost reporting
- Identified optimization opportunities to reduce waste and improve cost efficiency
This provided leadership with the insights needed to manage cloud investments strategically.
Measurable Business Impact
By deploying a secure, automated AWS Landing Zone, the bank achieved a step-change in its cloud maturity:
- Unified previously fragmented cloud deployments into a single governed platform
- Accelerated application onboarding with rapid account provisioning
- Strengthened security posture and regulatory compliance
- Enabled seamless hybrid integration with existing data centers
- Improved cost transparency and financial governance
As a next phase, application teams began migrating and deploying workloads into the Landing Zone, adopting a consistent, compliant, and repeatable cloud operating model. This foundation significantly accelerated the bank’s journey toward large-scale AWS adoption-unlocking faster innovation, reduced risk, and long-term operational efficiency.