AWS Security Blog

Establishing a data perimeter on AWS: Overview

November 23, 2022: This post had been updated to align with a related post: Establishing a data perimeter on AWS: Allow only trusted identities to access company data


For your sensitive data on AWS, you should implement security controls, including identity and access management, infrastructure security, and data protection. Amazon Web Services (AWS) recommends that you set up multiple accounts as your workloads grow to isolate applications and data that have specific security requirements. AWS tools can help you establish a data perimeter between your multiple accounts, while blocking unintended access from outside of your organization. Data perimeters on AWS span many different features and capabilities. Based on your security requirements, you should decide which capabilities are appropriate for your organization. In this first blog post on data perimeters, I discuss which AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) features and capabilities you can use to establish a data perimeter on AWS. Subsequent posts will provide implementation guidance and IAM policy examples for establishing your identity, resource, and network data perimeters.

A data perimeter is a set of preventive guardrails that help ensure that only your trusted identities are accessing trusted resources from expected networks. These terms are defined as follows:

  • Trusted identities – Principals (IAM roles or users) within your AWS accounts, or AWS services that are acting on your behalf
  • Trusted resources – Resources that are owned by your AWS accounts, or by AWS services that are acting on your behalf
  • Expected networks – Your on-premises data centers and virtual private clouds (VPCs), or networks of AWS services that are acting on your behalf

Data perimeter guardrails

You typically implement data perimeter guardrails as coarse-grained controls that apply across a broad set of AWS accounts and resources. When you implement a data perimeter, consider the following six primary control objectives.

Data perimeter Control objective
Identity Only trusted identities can access my resources.
Only trusted identities are allowed from my network.
Resource My identities can access only trusted resources.
Only trusted resources can be accessed from my network.
Network My identities can access resources only from expected networks.
My resources can only be accessed from expected networks.

Note that the controls in the preceding table are coarse in nature and are meant to serve as always-on boundaries. You can think of data perimeters as creating a firm boundary around your data to prevent unintended access patterns. Although data perimeters can prevent broad unintended access, you still need to make fine-grained access control decisions. Establishing a data perimeter does not diminish the need to continuously fine-tune permissions by using tools such as IAM Access Analyzer as part of your journey to least privilege.

To implement the preceding control objectives on AWS, use three primary capabilities:

Let’s expand the previous table to include the corresponding policies you would use to implement the controls for each of the control objectives.

Data perimeter Control objective Implemented by using
Identity Only trusted identities can access my resources. Resource-based policies
Only trusted identities are allowed from my network. VPC endpoint policies
Resource My identities can access only trusted resources. SCPs
Only trusted resources can be accessed from my network. VPC endpoint policies
Network My identities can access resources only from expected networks. SCPs
My resources can only be accessed from expected networks. Resource-based policies

As you can see in the preceding table, the correct policy for each control objective depends on which resource you are trying to secure. Resource-based policies, which are applied to resources such as Amazon S3 buckets, can be used to filter access based on the calling principal and the network from which they are making a call. VPC endpoint policies are used to inspect the principal that is making the API call and the resource they are trying to access. And SCPs are used to restrict your identities from accessing resources outside your control or from outside your network. Note that SCPs apply only to your principals within your AWS organization, whereas resource policies can be used to limit access to all principals.

The last components are the specific IAM controls or condition keys that enforce the control objective. For effective data perimeter controls, use the following primary IAM condition keys, including the new resource owner condition keys:

  • aws:PrincipalOrgID – Use this condition key to restrict access to trusted identities, your principals (roles or users) that belong to your organization. In the context of a data perimeter, you will use this condition key with your resource-based policies and VPC endpoint policies.
  • aws:ResourceOrgID – Use this condition key to restrict access to resources that belong to your AWS organization. To establish a data perimeter, you will use this condition key within SCPs and VPC endpoint policies.
  • aws:SourceIp, aws:SourceVpc, aws:SourceVpce – Use these condition keys to restrict access to expected network locations, such as your corporate network or your VPCs. In the context of a data perimeter, you will use these keys within identity and resource-based policies.

We can now complete the table that we’ve been developing throughout this post.

Data perimeter Control objective Implemented by using Primary IAM capability
Identity Only trusted identities can access my resources. Resource-based policies aws:PrincipalOrgID
aws:PrincipalIsAWSService
Only trusted identities are allowed from my network. VPC endpoint policies aws:PrincipalOrgID
aws:PrincipalIsAWSService
Resource My identities can access only trusted resources. SCPs aws:ResourceOrgID
Only trusted resources can be accessed from my network. VPC endpoint policies aws:ResourceOrgID
Network My identities can access resources only from expected networks. SCPs aws:SourceIp
aws:SourceVpc
aws:SourceVpce
aws:ViaAWSService
My resources can only be accessed from expected networks. Resource-based policies aws:SourceIp
aws:SourceVpc
aws:SourceVpce
aws:ViaAWSService
aws:PrincipalIsAWSService

For the identity data perimeter, the primary condition key is aws:PrincipalOrgID, which you can use in resource-based policies and VPC endpoint policies so that only your identities are allowed access. Use aws:PrincipalIsAWSService to allow AWS services to access your resources or your networks by using their own identities—for example, AWS CloudTrail can use this access to write data to your bucket.

For the resource data perimeter, the primary condition key is aws:ResourceOrgID, which you can use in an SCP policy or VPC endpoint policy to allow your identities and network to access only the resources that belong to your AWS organization.

Last, for the network perimeter, use the aws:SourceIp, aws:SourceVpc, and aws:SourceVpce condition keys in SCPs and resource-based policies to make sure that your identities and resources are accessed only from your trusted network. Use the aws:PrincipalIsAWSService and aws:ViaAWSService condition keys to allow AWS services to access your resources from outside your network locations. For example, CloudTrail can use this access to write data to one of your S3 buckets, or Amazon Athena can query data in your S3 buckets. For more information about using these keys as part of your data perimeter strategy, see the blog post IAM makes it easier for you to manage permissions for AWS services accessing your resources.

Conclusion

In this blog post, you learned the foundational elements that are needed to implement an identity, resource, and network data perimeter on AWS, including the primary IAM capabilities that are used to implement each of the control objectives. Stay tuned to the follow-up posts in this series, which will provide prescriptive guidance on establishing your identity, resource, and network data perimeters.

Following are additional resources that will help you further explore the data perimeter topic, including a whitepaper and a hands-on-workshop. We have also curated several blog posts related to the key IAM capabilities discussed in this post.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, contact AWS Support or start a new thread on the IAM forum. If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below.

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Author

Ilya Epshteyn

Ilya is a Senior Manager of Identity Solutions in AWS Identity. He helps customers to innovate on AWS by building highly secure, available, and scalable architectures. He enjoys spending time outdoors and building Lego creations with his kids.