README.md

March 19, 2026 · View on GitHub

This component is responsible for configuring Macie within an AWS Organization.

Amazon Macie is a data security service that discovers sensitive data by using machine learning and pattern matching, provides visibility into data security risks, and enables automated protection against those risks.

To help you manage the security posture of your organization's Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) data estate, Macie provides you with an inventory of your S3 buckets, and automatically evaluates and monitors the buckets for security and access control. If Macie detects a potential issue with the security or privacy of your data, such as a bucket that becomes publicly accessible, Macie generates a finding for you to review and remediate as necessary.

Macie also automates discovery and reporting of sensitive data to provide you with a better understanding of the data that your organization stores in Amazon S3. To detect sensitive data, you can use built-in criteria and techniques that Macie provides, custom criteria that you define, or a combination of the two. If Macie detects sensitive data in an S3 object, Macie generates a finding to notify you of the sensitive data that Macie found.

In addition to findings, Macie provides statistics and other data that offer insight into the security posture of your Amazon S3 data, and where sensitive data might reside in your data estate. The statistics and data can guide your decisions to perform deeper investigations of specific S3 buckets and objects. You can review and analyze findings, statistics, and other data by using the Amazon Macie console or the Amazon Macie API. You can also leverage Macie integration with Amazon EventBridge and AWS Security Hub to monitor, process, and remediate findings by using other services, applications, and systems.

Component Features

Delegated Administrator Model: Uses AWS Organizations delegated administrator pattern for centralized management
Multi-Region Deployment: Supports deployment across all AWS regions
Account Verification: Optional safety check that validates Terraform is running in the correct AWS account
Flexible Account Map: Supports both remote-state account-map lookups and static account map variables (default)

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Usage

Stack Level: Regional

Deployment Overview

This component uses the delegated administrator deployment model, which requires a 3-step deployment process. The component must be deployed multiple times with different variables to configure the AWS Organization.

Macie follows the same deployment pattern as GuardDuty and Security Hub.

In the examples below, we assume that the AWS Organization Management account is root and the AWS Organization Delegated Administrator account is security, both in the core tenant.

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                         AWS Organization                                     │
│                                                                              │
│  ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│  │  Organization Management Account (root)                                │ │
│  │  STEP 2: Delegate Macie administration to security account             │ │
│  │  - Creates: aws_macie2_organization_admin_account                      │ │
│  │  - Requires: SuperAdmin permissions (privileged: true)                 │ │
│  └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
│                              │                                              │
│                              ▼ Delegation                                   │
│  ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│  │  Delegated Administrator Account (security)                            │ │
│  │  STEP 1 (FIRST): Create Macie account (admin_delegated: false)         │ │
│  │  - Creates: aws_macie2_account                                         │ │
│  │                                                                        │ │
│  │  STEP 3 (LAST): Configure org settings (admin_delegated: true)         │ │
│  │  - Creates: awsutils_macie2_organization_settings                      │ │
│  │  - Enables member accounts, configures finding publishing              │ │
│  └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
│                              ▲                                              │
│                              │ Findings                                     │
│  ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│  │  Member Accounts (all other accounts)                                  │ │
│  │  - Automatically enabled by delegated administrator                    │ │
│  │  - S3 buckets automatically inventoried and monitored                  │ │
│  │  - Findings sent to security account                                   │ │
│  └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Deployment Steps Summary

Step	Account	Variable	Resources Created
1	Security	`admin_delegated: false`	`aws_macie2_account`
2	Root	`privileged: true`	`aws_macie2_organization_admin_account`
3	Security	`admin_delegated: true`	`awsutils_macie2_organization_settings`

Step 1: Deploy to Delegated Administrator Account (FIRST)

First, the component is deployed to the Delegated Administrator account to create the Macie account. This must be done before the root account delegates administration.

# core-use1-security
components:
  terraform:
    aws-macie/delegated-administrator:
      metadata:
        component: aws-macie
      vars:
        enabled: true
        delegated_administrator_account_name: core-security
        # Not yet delegated - creates Macie account only
        admin_delegated: false

atmos terraform apply aws-macie/delegated-administrator -s core-use1-security

Step 2: Deploy to Organization Management (root) Account

Next, the component is deployed to the AWS Organization Management account to delegate Macie administration to the security account.

Note that you need SuperAdmin permissions as we are deploying to the AWS Organization Management account. Since we are using the SuperAdmin user, it will already have access to the state bucket, so we set the role_arn of the backend config to null and set var.privileged to true.

# core-use1-root
components:
  terraform:
    aws-macie/root:
      metadata:
        component: aws-macie
      vars:
        enabled: true
        delegated_administrator_account_name: core-security
        privileged: true

atmos terraform apply aws-macie/root -s core-use1-root

Step 3: Deploy Organization Settings in Delegated Administrator Account (LAST)

Finally, the component is deployed to the Delegated Administrator Account again to create the organization-wide configuration. Set var.admin_delegated to true to indicate that the delegation has been completed.

# core-use1-security
components:
  terraform:
    aws-macie/org-settings:
      metadata:
        component: aws-macie
      vars:
        enabled: true
        delegated_administrator_account_name: core-security
        admin_delegated: true

atmos terraform apply aws-macie/org-settings -s core-use1-security

Multi-Region Deployment

Macie is a regional service. Deploy to each region where you have S3 buckets to monitor:

# Deploy to us-east-1 (all 3 steps)
atmos terraform apply aws-macie/delegated-administrator -s core-use1-security
atmos terraform apply aws-macie/root -s core-use1-root
atmos terraform apply aws-macie/org-settings -s core-use1-security

# Deploy to us-west-2 (all 3 steps)
atmos terraform apply aws-macie/delegated-administrator -s core-usw2-security
atmos terraform apply aws-macie/root -s core-usw2-root
atmos terraform apply aws-macie/org-settings -s core-usw2-security

Key Features

Sensitive Data Discovery: Automatically discovers PII, financial data, credentials, and other sensitive information in S3 using machine learning and pattern matching
S3 Bucket Inventory: Provides comprehensive inventory of S3 buckets with security and access control evaluation
Policy Findings: Detects security issues like publicly accessible buckets, disabled encryption, external sharing
Sensitive Data Findings: Reports discovered sensitive data including location and data type
Security Hub Integration: Findings published to AWS Security Hub for centralized security management
EventBridge Integration: Findings published to EventBridge for automated remediation workflows
Multi-account Coverage: Monitors S3 data across all accounts in the AWS Organization

Finding Publishing Frequency

The finding_publishing_frequency variable controls how often Macie publishes findings to Security Hub and EventBridge:

Value	Description
`FIFTEEN_MINUTES`	Publish every 15 minutes (default, recommended)
`ONE_HOUR`	Publish every hour
`SIX_HOURS`	Publish every 6 hours

Prerequisites

Before deploying this component:

AWS Organizations must be configured with the macie.amazonaws.com service access principal enabled
Account map: Either deploy the account-map component (when account_map_enabled = true) or provide a static account_map variable (default) to identify security and root accounts
Security Hub (recommended) should be deployed to receive findings

Important

In Cloud Posse's examples, we avoid pinning modules to specific versions to prevent discrepancies between the documentation and the latest released versions. However, for your own projects, we strongly advise pinning each module to the exact version you're using. This practice ensures the stability of your infrastructure. Additionally, we recommend implementing a systematic approach for updating versions to avoid unexpected changes.

Requirements

Name	Version
terraform	>= 1.4.0
aws	>= 5.0.0
awsutils	>= 0.17.0

Providers

Name	Version
aws	>= 5.0.0
awsutils	>= 0.17.0
terraform	n/a

Modules

Name	Source	Version
account_map	cloudposse/stack-config/yaml//modules/remote-state	1.8.0
this	cloudposse/label/null	0.25.0

Resources

Name	Type
aws_macie2_account.this	resource
aws_macie2_organization_admin_account.this	resource
awsutils_macie2_organization_settings.this	resource
terraform_data.account_verification	resource
aws_caller_identity.this	data source

Inputs

Name	Description	Type	Default	Required
account_map	Static account map configuration. Only used when `account_map_enabled` is `false`. Map keys use `tenant-stage` format (e.g., `core-security`, `core-audit`, `plat-prod`).	object({ full_account_map = map(string) audit_account_account_name = optional(string, "") root_account_account_name = optional(string, "") identity_account_account_name = optional(string, "") aws_partition = optional(string, "aws") iam_role_arn_templates = optional(map(string), {}) })	{ "audit_account_account_name": "", "aws_partition": "aws", "full_account_map": {}, "iam_role_arn_templates": {}, "identity_account_account_name": "", "root_account_account_name": "" }	no
account_map_component_name	The name of the account-map component	`string`	`"account-map"`	no
account_map_enabled	Enable the account map component. When true, the component fetches account mappings from the `account-map` component via remote state. When false (default), the component uses the static `account_map` variable instead.	`bool`	`false`	no
account_map_tenant	The tenant where the `account_map` component required by remote-state is deployed	`string`	`"core"`	no
account_verification_enabled	Enable account verification. When true (default), the component verifies that Terraform is executing in the correct AWS account by comparing the current account ID against the expected account from the account_map based on the component's tenant-stage context.	`bool`	`true`	no
additional_tag_map	Additional key-value pairs to add to each map in `tags_as_list_of_maps`. Not added to `tags` or `id`. This is for some rare cases where resources want additional configuration of tags and therefore take a list of maps with tag key, value, and additional configuration.	`map(string)`	`{}`	no
admin_delegated	A flag to indicate if the AWS Organization-wide settings should be created. This can only be done after the Macie Administrator account has already been delegated from the AWS Org Management account (usually 'root'). See the Deployment section of the README for more information.	`bool`	`false`	no
attributes	ID element. Additional attributes (e.g. `workers` or `cluster`) to add to `id`, in the order they appear in the list. New attributes are appended to the end of the list. The elements of the list are joined by the `delimiter` and treated as a single ID element.	`list(string)`	`[]`	no
context	Single object for setting entire context at once. See description of individual variables for details. Leave string and numeric variables as `null` to use default value. Individual variable settings (non-null) override settings in context object, except for attributes, tags, and additional_tag_map, which are merged.	`any`	{ "additional_tag_map": {}, "attributes": [], "delimiter": null, "descriptor_formats": {}, "enabled": true, "environment": null, "id_length_limit": null, "label_key_case": null, "label_order": [], "label_value_case": null, "labels_as_tags": [ "unset" ], "name": null, "namespace": null, "regex_replace_chars": null, "stage": null, "tags": {}, "tenant": null }	no
delegated_administrator_account_name	The name of the account that is the AWS Organization Delegated Administrator account	`string`	`"core-security"`	no
delimiter	Delimiter to be used between ID elements. Defaults to `-` (hyphen). Set to `""` to use no delimiter at all.	`string`	`null`	no
descriptor_formats	Describe additional descriptors to be output in the `descriptors` output map. Map of maps. Keys are names of descriptors. Values are maps of the form `{<br/> format = string<br/> labels = list(string)<br/>}` (Type is `any` so the map values can later be enhanced to provide additional options.) `format` is a Terraform format string to be passed to the `format()` function. `labels` is a list of labels, in order, to pass to `format()` function. Label values will be normalized before being passed to `format()` so they will be identical to how they appear in `id`. Default is `{}` (`descriptors` output will be empty).	`any`	`{}`	no
enabled	Set to false to prevent the module from creating any resources	`bool`	`null`	no
environment	ID element. Usually used for region e.g. 'uw2', 'us-west-2', OR role 'prod', 'staging', 'dev', 'UAT'	`string`	`null`	no
finding_publishing_frequency	Specifies how often to publish updates to policy findings for the account. This includes publishing updates to AWS Security Hub and Amazon EventBridge (formerly called Amazon CloudWatch Events). Valid values: FIFTEEN_MINUTES, ONE_HOUR, or SIX_HOURS. For more information, see:	`string`	`"FIFTEEN_MINUTES"`	no
global_environment	Global environment name	`string`	`"gbl"`	no
id_length_limit	Limit `id` to this many characters (minimum 6). Set to `0` for unlimited length. Set to `null` for keep the existing setting, which defaults to `0`. Does not affect `id_full`.	`number`	`null`	no
label_key_case	Controls the letter case of the `tags` keys (label names) for tags generated by this module. Does not affect keys of tags passed in via the `tags` input. Possible values: `lower`, `title`, `upper`. Default value: `title`.	`string`	`null`	no
label_order	The order in which the labels (ID elements) appear in the `id`. Defaults to ["namespace", "environment", "stage", "name", "attributes"]. You can omit any of the 6 labels ("tenant" is the 6th), but at least one must be present.	`list(string)`	`null`	no
label_value_case	Controls the letter case of ID elements (labels) as included in `id`, set as tag values, and output by this module individually. Does not affect values of tags passed in via the `tags` input. Possible values: `lower`, `title`, `upper` and `none` (no transformation). Set this to `title` and set `delimiter` to `""` to yield Pascal Case IDs. Default value: `lower`.	`string`	`null`	no
labels_as_tags	Set of labels (ID elements) to include as tags in the `tags` output. Default is to include all labels. Tags with empty values will not be included in the `tags` output. Set to `[]` to suppress all generated tags. Notes: The value of the `name` tag, if included, will be the `id`, not the `name`. Unlike other `null-label` inputs, the initial setting of `labels_as_tags` cannot be changed in later chained modules. Attempts to change it will be silently ignored.	`set(string)`	[ "default" ]	no
member_accounts	List of member account names to enable Macie on	`list(string)`	`[]`	no
name	ID element. Usually the component or solution name, e.g. 'app' or 'jenkins'. This is the only ID element not also included as a `tag`. The "name" tag is set to the full `id` string. There is no tag with the value of the `name` input.	`string`	`null`	no
namespace	ID element. Usually an abbreviation of your organization name, e.g. 'eg' or 'cp', to help ensure generated IDs are globally unique	`string`	`null`	no
organization_management_account_name	The name of the AWS Organization management account	`string`	`null`	no
privileged	true if the default provider already has access to the backend	`bool`	`false`	no
regex_replace_chars	Terraform regular expression (regex) string. Characters matching the regex will be removed from the ID elements. If not set, `"/[^a-zA-Z0-9-]/"` is used to remove all characters other than hyphens, letters and digits.	`string`	`null`	no
region	AWS Region	`string`	n/a	yes
root_account_stage	The stage name for the Organization root (management) account. This is used to lookup account IDs from account names using the `account-map` component.	`string`	`"root"`	no
stage	ID element. Usually used to indicate role, e.g. 'prod', 'staging', 'source', 'build', 'test', 'deploy', 'release'	`string`	`null`	no
tags	Additional tags (e.g. `{'BusinessUnit': 'XYZ'}`). Neither the tag keys nor the tag values will be modified by this module.	`map(string)`	`{}`	no
tenant	ID element _(Rarely used, not included by default)_. A customer identifier, indicating who this instance of a resource is for	`string`	`null`	no

Outputs

Name	Description
delegated_administrator_account_id	The AWS Account ID of the AWS Organization delegated administrator account
macie_account_id	The ID of the Macie account created by the component
macie_service_role_arn	The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the service-linked role that allows Macie to monitor and analyze data in AWS resources for the account.
member_account_ids	The AWS Account IDs of the member accounts

Check out these related projects.

Cloud Posse Terraform Modules - Our collection of reusable Terraform modules used by our reference architectures.
Atmos - Atmos is like docker-compose but for your infrastructure
aws-guardduty Component - Related component for AWS GuardDuty threat detection
aws-securityhub Component - Related component for AWS Security Hub

References

For additional context, refer to some of these links.

AWS Macie Documentation - Official AWS Macie service documentation
AWS Macie User Guide - Comprehensive guide for setting up and using Macie
Setting Up Macie - Getting started with AWS Macie
Macie Discovery Jobs - Creating sensitive data discovery jobs
Macie Findings - Understanding Macie findings types and formats
Custom Data Identifiers - Creating custom patterns for sensitive data detection
Macie Pricing - AWS Macie pricing information
Terraform aws_macie2_account - Terraform resource documentation for Macie account
Terraform aws_macie2_organization_admin_account - Terraform resource documentation for Macie organization admin

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For 🐛 bug reports & feature requests, please use the issue tracker.

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Review our Code of Conduct and Contributor Guidelines.
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Running Terraform Tests

We use Atmos to streamline how Terraform tests are run. It centralizes configuration and wraps common test workflows with easy-to-use commands.

All tests are located in the test/ folder.

Under the hood, tests are powered by Terratest together with our internal Test Helpers library, providing robust infrastructure validation.

Setup dependencies:

Install Atmos (installation guide)
Install Go 1.24+ or newer
Install Terraform or OpenTofu

To run tests:

Run all tests:
```
atmos test run
```
Clean up test artifacts:
```
atmos test clean
```
Explore additional test options:
```
atmos test --help
```

The configuration for test commands is centrally managed. To review what's being imported, see the atmos.yaml file.

Learn more about our automated testing in our documentation or implementing custom commands with atmos.

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Preamble to the Apache License, Version 2.0

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regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
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  https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

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