AWS EC2 Image Builder: Automation and Compliance for Machine Image Management

Addressing Image Management Complexity

Maintaining current and secure Amazon Machine Images and container images presents significant operational challenges. Organizations typically resort to either labor-intensive manual snapshots of EC2 instances or develop proprietary automation frameworks to handle image updates. EC2 Image Builder, a fully-managed AWS offering, streamlines customization, validation, distribution, and ongoing lifecycle management of these images.

The service eliminates the need for manual intervention and custom automation development by bundling built-in automation with AWS-standard security configurations. Pricing follows a consumption model—customers pay only for the underlying AWS resources consumed during image creation, storage, and replication, with no separate service fees.

Key Advantages

Operational Efficiency Gains

The service substantially decreases the workload required to keep virtual machine and container images current and hardened. Its intuitive console interface, embedded automation capabilities, and pre-configured security baselines eliminate repetitive manual tasks and the need to develop internal automation frameworks. Teams can redirect resources previously spent writing and maintaining custom code toward higher-value initiatives.

Enhanced Security Posture

Image Builder enables creation of minimal images containing only necessary components, reducing the attack surface. When security updates become available, the service can automatically apply patches across image portfolios. Organizations can enforce AWS-standard security controls—including password policies, full-disk encryption, and firewall activation—or implement custom policies aligned with internal compliance frameworks.

Integrated Testing and Validation

The platform provides built-in testing capabilities for validating images against functional requirements, compatibility standards, and security benchmarks using both AWS-supplied and custom test suites. This approach catches defects before production deployment. Organizations can configure workflows where production rollout depends on successful test completion.

Cross-Account Governance

Image Builder incorporates version tracking for audit trails and change management. Integration with AWS Resource Access Manager, AWS Organizations, and Amazon ECR facilitates sharing of automation components, recipes, and images across multiple AWS accounts. This architecture enables security and compliance teams to establish and enforce standardized policies and validation requirements across organizational boundaries.

AWS Marketplace Integration

Organizations can subscribe to AWS Marketplace image products directly from the Image Builder console and use them as foundation images in recipes. The service enables discovery and integration of third-party components from verified AWS Marketplace vendors, supporting requirements in monitoring, security, governance, and compliance domains.

Adoption in Practice

AC3

AC3, an Australia and New Zealand-based managed service provider established in 1999, oversees more than 14,000 virtual machines serving over half of New South Wales state government agencies alongside hundreds of enterprise clients. The organization adopted EC2 Image Builder to streamline virtual machine construction, validation, and deployment workflows.

We've never really looked at anything beyond Packer before, as it was the standard. But, when Image Builder came along, it felt like the natural progression. The native integration is really key! Having a managed service in AWS that owns key aspects, such as image versioning and troubleshooting errors, was a big win. Also, the rapid feature improvements make it our go-to image management service. Those two things make Image Builder a more seamless part of our image delivery pipeline.

Greg Cockburn, Head of Cloud - AC3

Genesys

Genesys, a customer experience orchestration platform with three decades of industry presence, transitioned its AMI production pipeline from Packer to EC2 Image Builder on AWS infrastructure. The organization now generates thousands of AMIs weekly using the service and follows immutable infrastructure patterns requiring rapid, dependable AMI generation for its EC2 deployments.

We prefer to adopt managed services for utility purposes as much as possible, so we were happy to integrate EC2 Image Builder and minimize the undifferentiated elements of our image pipeline. The integrations that Image Builder provides natively with other AWS services and flexibility to customize it for our compliance needs make it a great fit for our platform.

Glenn Nethercutt, Chief Architect, Genesys Cloud

Verisk Analytics

Verisk Analytics, a data analytics and risk management firm founded in 1971, leverages AWS infrastructure to deliver data-driven insights supporting organizational resilience and sustainability. The company uses EC2 Image Builder to produce standardized, hardened golden AMIs incorporating approved security patches and endpoint defense software.

We have been running custom AWS Systems Manager-based pipelines to manage golden images for a few years. We evaluated EC2 Image Builder immediately after its announcement, and it made sense for us to migrate to the managed service to simplify the pipelines and leverage service functionality instead of our custom automation. Today, we generate a catalog of golden images for Windows and Linux operating systems that we distribute to over 300 accounts in multiple regions for consumption.

Eugene Kim, AVP - Cloud Architecture, Verisk Analytics