Category: AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

September 9, 2021: HAQM Elasticsearch Service has been renamed to HAQM OpenSearch Service. See details. With the recent release of HAQM Elasticsearch Service (HAQM ES), you now can build applications without setting up and maintaining your own search cluster on HAQM EC2. One of the key benefits of using HAQM ES is that you can […]

Update on October 24, 2018: Note that if you do not author the Lambda function correctly, this setup can create an infinite loop (in this case, a rule that is fired repeatedly, which can impact your AWS resources and cause higher than expected charges to your account). The example Lambda function I provide in Step […]

Update: The video and slides from the webinar are now available. As part of the AWS Webinar Series, AWS will present Best Practices for Managing Security Operations in AWS on Wednesday, March 30. This webinar will start at 10:30 A.M. and end at 11:30 A.M. Pacific Time (UTC-7). AWS Security Solutions Architect Henrik Johansson will share […]

Back in September, I wrote about How to Help Lock Down a User’s HAQM EC2 Capabilities to a Single VPC. In that blog post, I highlighted what I have found to be an effective approach to the virtual private cloud (VPC) lockdown scenario. Since that time, I have worked on making the related information easier […]

On the AWS Security Blog, we have talked regularly about following AWS security best practices. For example, we published Adhere to IAM Best Practices in 2016 in January. Best practices can help you keep your AWS resources as secure as possible, and should be applied when you grant access inside and outside your organization. Building off AWS […]

AWS Config recently added the ability to record changes to the configuration of your AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) users, groups, and roles (collectively referred to as IAM entities) and the policies associated with them. Using this feature, you can record configuration details for these IAM entities, including details about which policies are associated […]

Deleting unused resources can help to improve the security of your AWS account and make your account easier to manage. However, if you have ever been unsure of whether an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user or role was being used actively, you probably erred on the side of caution and kept it. Starting […]

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 […]

In my previous post, I introduced service last accessed data, a new feature of the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) console that helps you define policies that adhere better to the principle of least privilege. As part of that post, I walked through a sample use case demonstrating how you can use service last […]

As a security best practice, AWS recommends writing AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies that adhere to the principle of least privilege, which means granting only the permissions required to perform a specific task. However, verifying which permissions an application or user actually needs can be a challenge. To help you determine which permissions […]