Managing Access with AWS IAM for Microservices

OneData Software offers access management capabilities as part of its security & governance practice, using AWS IAM to secure microservices, EKS pods, and cross-account AI services. While not every implementation detail is public, the combination of their published practices shows that they design identity and permission boundaries carefully, apply least-privilege, and ensure cross-account or cross-service access is done securely.

Core Capabilities & Practices

1. Defining Least-Privilege IAM Policies & Roles o Create IAM roles for microservices & backend components, ensuring each service or pod has only the permissions required for its function. o Restrict what actions (e.g. read, write, delete) are allowed, and limit resources (e.g. only certain S3 buckets, certain DynamoDB tables, certain APIs). o For IoT / device identity, as in their guide, ensure devices/pods have minimal permissions.

2. IAM Integration with EKS Pods / Kubernetes o Use IAM roles for service accounts (IRSA) so that pods in EKS can assume specific IAM roles rather than using node IAM roles. o Map Kubernetes RBAC and EKS IAM integration to limit which pods can access which AWS resources.

3. Cross-Account Access for AI / ML Services o Where AI/ML services run in one account and resources (data, storage, inference endpoints etc.) are in others, setting up IAM roles and trust relationships across accounts. o Using cross-account permissions safely with resource policies, ensuring minimal exposure.

4. Service Identity & Credential Management o Use IAM roles (rather than long-lived credentials) for services, pods, microservices. o Rotate IAM credentials when needed, avoid embedding credentials.

5. Policy Auditing, Monitoring, & Governance o Use AWS IAM Policy sim/analysis, AWS IAM Access Analyzer, AWS Organizations / Service Control Policies to enforce guardrails. o Capture and review IAM permissions, identify “over-permissive” roles, adjust policies. o Include IAM in Well-Architected reviews.

6. Secure Service-to-Service Communication o Ensure that microservices can call each other or AWS services only via properly scoped roles. o Limit access from pods to data stores or messaging services in accordance with need.

7. Automation & Infrastructure as Code for IAM o Define IAM policies, roles, trust relationships, permissions in IaC (Terraform / CloudFormation) so they are versioned, auditable, repeatable. o Use principal of least privilege in the templates, avoid manual grants.

8. Compliance & Best Practices o Ensuring IAM policies align with security standards / regulatory needs (e.g. healthcare, data privacy). o Include IAM in security reviews, ensure audit logs (via CloudTrail) for IAM changes.

Benefits

• Reduced risk of unauthorized access due to overly broad permissions. • Better traceability of actions: know which service/pod did what (via IAM roles/service accounts). • Easier to enforce separation of concerns, least privilege, cross-account boundaries. • Enhanced governance and compliance posture. • More secure microservice / Kubernetes environments; safer AI / ML workflows across accounts.