Tag: least privilege

December 4, 2020: We’ve updated this post to use s3:CreateBucket to simplify the intro example, replaced figure 8 removing the IfExists reference, and clarified qualifier information in the example. In this post, I’m going to share two techniques I’ve used to write least privilege AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies. If you’re not familiar […]

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) Access Analyzer generates comprehensive findings to help you identify resources that grant public and cross-account access. Now, you can also apply archive rules to existing findings, so you can better manage findings and focus on the findings that need your attention most. You can think of archive rules as […]

September 12, 2022: This blog post has been updated to reflect the new name of AWS Single Sign-On (SSO) – AWS IAM Identity Center. Read more about the name change here. When you audit an environment governed by AWS Control Tower, having visibility into the AWS Control Tower console allows you to collect important configuration […]

August 31, 2021: AWS KMS is replacing the term customer master key (CMK) with AWS KMS key and KMS key. The concept has not changed. To prevent breaking changes, AWS KMS is keeping some variations of this term. More info. One of the top security methodologies is the principle of least privilege, which is the […]

September 28, 2023: IAM is incrementally adding support for actions from more services. For a list of services that report action last accessed information, see IAM action last accessed information services and actions. Customers tell us that when their teams and projects are just getting started, administrators may grant broad access to inspire innovation and […]

February 19, 2024: You can now use IAM Access Analyzer to easily identify unused roles. Read this blog post to learn more. November 25, 2019: We’ve corrected a documentation link. As you build on AWS, you create AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles to enable teams and applications to use AWS services. As those […]

As an administrator that grants access to AWS, you might want to enable your developers to get started with AWS quickly by granting them broad access. However, as your developers gain experience and your applications stabilize, you want to limit permissions to only what they need. To do this, access advisor will determine the permissions […]

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) has made it easier for you to create and modify your IAM policies by using a point-and-click visual editor in the IAM console. The new visual editor guides you through granting permissions using IAM policies without requiring you to write the policy in JSON (although you can still author and edit policies in JSON, if you prefer). This update to the IAM console makes it easier to grant least privilege permissions for the AWS service actions you select by listing all the supported resource types and request conditions you can specify. And, as with policy summaries, the visual editor also identifies and helps you correct unrecognized services and actions and permissions errors when you import existing policies. In this blog post, I give a brief overview of policy concepts and show you how to create a new policy by using the visual editor.

As part of the re:Source Mini Con for Security Services at AWS re:Invent 2016, we conducted a workshop focused on Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) identity federation: Choose Your Own SAML Adventure: A Self-Directed Journey to AWS Identity Federation Mastery. As part of this workshop, attendees were able to submit their own federation-focused questions to […]

As another new year begins, we encourage you to review our recommended AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) best practices. Following these best practices can help you maintain the security of your AWS resources. You can learn more by watching the IAM Best Practices to Live By presentation that Anders Samuelsson gave at AWS re:Invent […]